Dominoes
by Super Chocolate Bear
Summary: The Doctor is thrown into an automated prison with four humans, each from a different time period but all from Earth. Something connects them, and as they get closer to the answers, it becomes clear that someone in control has an interest in the Doctor...
1. Prologue

(A/N: Spoilers for _Doctor Who_ up to 'Planet of the Dead' and _Torchwood: Children of Earth_)

Disclaimer: I don't own _Doctor Who._

_**Dominoes**_

_**Prologue**_

He went forwards and backwards.

Up and down.

He didn't move. He never moved. Still the same streaks of light around him. He could draw all of it with his eyes closed. If he could move his hands.

Hands, plans, clans.

His clan was gone now.

But they were still here, lingering. Taunting. He hated them. He loved them.

He hated hating them because he loved them.

All because of _him._

It was the pity that made it worse.

Worse, hearse, curse.

A curse that _he _had put on him with nothing but an apology. The pity in those dead eyes… it was enough to drive him mad.

Mad, bad, sad.

It was the sadness that had him now. It would be the anger again, soon. These things had rhythms. They tended to loop back on themselves.

The irony.

He went forwards and backwards.

Up and down.

He moved.


	2. Transition

Disclaimer: I don't own _Doctor Who._

_**Dominoes**_

_**Chapter One: Transition**_

Humans. Bloody humans. Thinking that everyone on all the different planets of the known universe will understand their archaic language.

T'nok remembered reading somewhere that the language _the entire human race _used came from one tiny island. How backwards was that? Surely it should have come from the biggest continent. Why pick some obscure island in the middle of the ocean and say 'Yes, this language seems sufficient'. It was full of words that sounded and looked the same but meant different things, not to mention (and this was what _really _raised his ire) _stealing _bits and pieces of language from other continents!

Like 'déjà vu'. Couldn't think of a word for the sensation yourselves, eh? Had to take it from somewhere else? If they were going to pick a language from one island, they could at least stick to it with some conviction.

And speaking of tippy toppy kin kan koon (he didn't understand why humans couldn't accept his language as easily as he did theirs), it seemed as if another of the bothersome species was sauntering up to his shop. He bet the grinning idiot didn't even have the right currency.

"Oh, a little shop!" he said loudly (in perfect Pl't'k'enese), hands in pockets as he wandered around. "I love a little shop. Especially when it's themed."

"Themed, sir?" he asked politely, not sure how to approach this particular human. He was dressed in a very peculiar fashion, as well. Although it matched the frankly unpredictable glimmer in his eyes, so T'nok couldn't fault his choices.

The man only just then seemed to notice him, his grin moving around a little as yet _more _joy seemed to explode from him.

"Oh! Hello, this must be your shop. I'm the Doctor." He waved a hand in the traditional human gesture.

T'nok raised a grey tentacle.

"T'nok. Pleased to meet you."

"And you. But yes, themed! I mean, I just came here to see the Gravity Pools of Trumann 3, but this…" He took a moment to look around again. _"…this _is impressive. Gravity Pool pens, Gravity Pool tents… Gravity Pool paddling pools! Brilliant!"

"Humans do tend to enjoy souvenirs."

"Don't they just. I'm usually just happy with the memories, myself, but, hate to say it, I'm getting on a bit." He tapped his head with two fingers. "The old hard drive's not processing as fast as it used to. Bless me. An old codger, really."

"I… find that hard to believe, sir."

"Don't you glow your mandibles at me like that. Respect your elders, young man."

Something dinged like a small bell.

The Doctor blinked and suddenly rummaged around in the pockets of his large coat, as though something was burning him. He yanked out whatever it was and held it in front of him.

T'nok eyed the device warily. "Erm…"

"Tell me, T'nok, have you noticed anything strange going on here?"

"Lots of strange things happen here."

"Really? Like what?"

Rather than answer the surprisingly earnest question, T'nok paused for a moment before reconsidering his earlier answer. "Actually… no, nothing strange."

The Doctor tutted disappointedly, eyes still on the device. "That's a shame. I was just passing by, you see, when my timey-wimey detector - that's this thing, by the way - went ding. Just once, mind, but believe me, once is _more _then enough when it comes to timey-wimey-ness. So I backtracked, and wouldn't you know it, another timey-wimey ding. And I'm a curious old blighter, me, so I updated the timey-wimey detector - it was much bigger before, made in the sixties, although it _did _have a certain retro charm - and, _allons-y_, here we are. Well, here _I _am."

For the briefest, almost imperceptible of moments, the Doctor looked saddened by something he had said. Then it passed, just in time for another ding.

"Ah!" he announced, triumphant. "Y'see? There it is again." He waved the device around a little, trying to follow whatever it was that had piqued his curiosity. It dinged when it pointed over T'nok's head.

"What's that way, T'nok?"

"That's… the gravity pools."

"Oh, timey-wimey _and _gravity pools, that's not good."

T'nok was becoming a little wary now. It seemed to show, and the Doctor frowned.

"You all right? You look scared."

"Well… I am."

His face blank, the Doctor just let out a tiny 'oh' before looking over T'nok's shoulder contemplatively. Then he looked back to him.

"Sorry. I'll just…" He nodded towards the doorway. "Yeah."

The device in his hands dinged a few more times as he walked out of the shop, looking a little unsure of himself. Stopping at the doorway with his back to T'nok, he seemed to stand around for a few moments before finally dashing off to the left.

* * *

The Doctor first realised he was getting closer to the gravity pools when the ground started crunching beneath his feet. The builders of the Trumann tourist centre clearly wanted to give some of the customers a sense of 'reality', and 'grittiness'.

To that end… grit and dirt. The natural surface of the asteroid the pools were on, although he was still stood in a reinforced metal tunnel. Strange how they were called 'The Gravity Pools of Trumann 3'. The asteroid just orbited _around _Trumann 3. They didn't really have any particular stake in it except for some twist of fate directing the asteroid at their planet.

Nine hundred years of travelling in space and time, and the Doctor was fairly sure he hadn't come across anything quite as strange as the tourism industry.

The timey-wimey detector dinged three times, so close together they were almost simultaneous.

"Ooo, lots of dings…"

Tongue firmly set in cheek in concentration, the Doctor ventured forth towards the turnstiles and the very bored looking attendant in the booth. He looked vaguely human (or Time Lord), if only because he had a nose, two eyes and a mouth. The scaly green skin and the three nostrils, however, helped to discriminate him a little. Octonarian, by the look of him.

"_Five coltams," _he said, voice squawking through the intercom.

The Doctor stared at him for a moment, looked to the turnstile, and then back to the attendant.

"Oh! Yes. Let me just…"

Putting the TWD (Timey-Wimey-Detector; much easier to say TWD, though) away in his coat pocket, the Doctor rummaged around for whatever currency he had. In the end he came up with an unopened packet of Fisherman's Friends (he didn't like mints, except Soft mints, they were brilliant), two tickets for a _very _raunchy show on Kanterlon Nine he had been given by accident, the melted remains of a Furby (a result of Donna not knowing the difference between a killer Tokenon Snuffle-Paw and a stuffed Earth toy) and, finally, a single peso.

The bored attendant took the raunchy tickets and let him through.

"They're not mine, by the way."

"Sure."

"They're not!" he whined defensively, his voice doing the squeaky-angry thing he got from Five.

"And I believe you, sir," the attendant replied, already bored.

Glad to be rid of them, the Doctor settled for gathering his other trinkets and continued on through the holo-turnstile.

TWD stretched out in front of him, the Doctor pulled from his pocket the iPod headphones he had borrowed (ahem) from Mickey years ago and plugged them in. Dinging was all well and good, but sometimes ears needed something a little more precise. Even Time Lord ears.

Something more akin to sonar now bleeped in his ears, taking him off to the left and away from the direction of the gravity pools.

Which was good. Localised black holes and timey-wimey stuff _in the same place?_ Not a good thing. A very bad thing, in fact. Well, horrible, really. Well, not _horrible_, but certainly against the laws of time and physics as the Doctor knew them. Which, in itself, would be bad.

Then again, people had told him that _he _was against the laws of time and physics as they knew them, so maybe it wouldn't be so bad.

But he was getting off the point, as he so often did. The TWD was going positively mad now, which meant he was right on top of it.

Actually… he _was _right on top of it. It was beneath him. The Doctor crouched down, putting the TWD in his pocket but keeping the headphones in as he wiped the dust away.

"Allons-y," he murmured, and started digging in earnest.

* * *

T'nok rushed out of the door and let it slide shut behind him before punching in the locking code. He needed a break. Tourists were one thing, but completely mad humans brandishing strange beeping devices and muttering away (mostly to themselves) about 'timey-wimey' and other such nonsense?

No thank you. A little break was needed, and a little break was what he was going to get.

Just as he turned away, rotating his hover device around, T'nok heard the marching. The unified, organised grunts.

He looked down the corridor and saw the crowds clearing out of the way.

And there were the Judoon, stomping (seemingly) directly towards him.

He wondered what to do. Should he run? Stay still? Get out of the way?

The lead Judoon, holding a device not unlike the one the Doctor had shown him, jabbed an authoritative finger in his direction.

He said something in Judoon, angry and sharp.

"Um… I, um…"

But they were already upon him, remaining in a straight line as their leader did his work. A rough hand grabbed him by the neck (which was thin as it was) and yanked him forward. The translator was then swiftly poked in his face.

"Listen, I really haven't been doing anything illegal, if you could let me show you my ID…"

The Judoon, still keeping one hand on him, slammed the translator into the slot on his chest. T'nok didn't really believe the Judoon would listen to what was said on it, but it had been worth a try. He heard his voice repeated back to him.

"Language confirmed. Designation Pl't'k'enese."

"Yes, well, now that we're-"

"Trace temporal signature detected," he grumbled, pointing to T'nok's shop. "Leading here."

"Um… really? W-what are you looking for?"

"Target designated 'the Doctor'."

"Oh! He's down there. He said he was heading for the gravity pools."

Apparently not listening, two of the Judoon had pulled out their pistols and were taking aim at the shop door.

T'nok moved forward hesitantly. "Wait, wait, let me just-"

They fired, melting a hole in the metal door.

"-open… it…"

In a few moments, they were in, rifling through the shop and blasting open doors at the back. T'nok just watched with bleak resignation.

After a few more minutes of crashing, guttural orders and discussions and a few more laser shots, the Judoon filed out.

He held out a waiting tentacle as they passed. The head Judoon gave him his compensation forms, which T'nok decided he would look over while he went home early. He just thanked the Gods that he didn't have a family to worry about. His parents would be irritated enough as it is. All five of them.

* * *

This was all very confusing. And dirty. Not that the Doctor objected to getting his hands dirty, mucking in, everyone doing their part, that sort of thing…

But blimey, he had been digging with his hands for awhile. And his nice blue suit was getting dust all over it.

_And_ that bloody TWD was still dinging away like nobody's business, as if to taunt him.

"_It's right in front of you, Doctor. It's right in front of you, Doctor. It's-"_

"Hang on," he said out loud, silencing the imaginary (and oddly tinny) voice.

Something metal glinted beneath him, obscured by dark blue muck and grit. He started scrabbling down in earnest, tongue firmly wedged between his teeth as he grinned.

"Aaaah!" he announced, loud and long as he scooped the tiny spherical… thing… out of the ground. He held it up to the heavens (well, the metal corridor ceiling) in triumph.

"Ah…" he mumbled, bringing it back down to eye level and slipping on his glasses. The dinging was becoming irritating now, so the Doctor yanked out the headphones and switched off the TWD, slipping both back into his coat pocket.

"Ah…?"

A red light flashed in the middle, but other than that, it was just a vaguely egg-shaped piece of metal. Well, an egg with the top and bottom chopped off. But still, nothing particularly timey-wimey about it. Or indeed, wibbly-wobbly. Slipping out the sonic screwdriver, he used it to open the device at the seam that ran all around the sides and over the top. It split open fairly easily, revealing some rather complicated circuitry inside. He put the sonic screwdriver in his mouth so he could inspect the device better.

"Aaaaah," he said, nodding in understanding. It was a beacon, designed to emit a small temporal distortion. Not enough to do any harm, but loud enough that someone passing by with enough time-sensitive equipment could pick it up.

Which probably meant…

He whirled around, meeting a group of Judoon who had (surprisingly quietly) snuck up on him.

"Ah."

Their weapons whirred dangerously. The Doctor eyed them, his hands still gripping the beacon.

"Hlo," he managed, the screwdriver wedged in his mouth not really helping the lines of communication.

Dropping the beacon, he spat the tool into his hand.

"Sorry, yes, hello, I'm-"

"Name unknown, title the Doctor, species designation Time Lord," the lead Judoon barked, speaking in T'nok's language. No prizes for guessing who told them where to find him, then.

"Well, yes, if you want to be-"

"Drop sonic probe."

"Look, if you just-"

"Now!"

"All right, all right, no need to be rude…"

Rolling his eyes theatrically at the Judoon, he let the tool drop to the floor between his feet.

"Hands in the air."

"Like I just don't care?"

The Judoon was silent for a moment.

"Hands in the air."

"Not a fan of the classics, then," the Doctor muttered, raising the offending appendages up.

"Silence required."

Feeling thoroughly pushed around, the Doctor still complied, knowing that arguing with a squadron of Judoon just got you shot.

But then nothing happened for the longest time, and the Doctor got impatient.

"Look, sorry, I know you said silence, but is something in particular supposed to-"

The beacon beneath him started beeping again, louder and louder. A shaft of light sprang into being around him from the device, and the Doctor slowly lowered his arms.

"…happen?"

He looked to the Judoon, who were putting away their weapons.

"Ah. So this would be a-"

More light, this one far more sudden and ridiculously brighter, cut him off, and the Doctor squinted. Suddenly, he was in the dark again, blinking away spots and rubbing his eyes. The force field was gone, and so was the cavern.

"-teleporter."

The Doctor frowned, and said 'teleporter' again.

Nothing came out.

Frown deepening, he said anything that came to mind, pressing his fingers to his neck.

"She sells sea shells by the sea shore. Red lorry, yellow lorry, red lorry, yellow lorry, red lorry, yellow lorry, red lolly, yellow lolly…"

Still nothing. Although his vocal chords were vibrating away, so it wasn't _him _at fault.

As his eyes adjusted and he found there _was _some light, he saw there were four walls, a bed, and a small cubicle in the corner. Cautiously wandering over to it, he found a toilet waiting for him, looking rather unappealing. A sink, a mirror, a little alcove he assumed was a shower, and that was it. Lovely.

Going back to where he initially appeared, the Doctor found his sonic screwdriver beside the now inert beacon on the floor. He briefly considered tinkering with it to see if it could get him back, but thought better of it after a second glance. It looked burned out; valid for a one way trip only, it seemed.

Sitting down on the stiff bed, the Doctor brought the sonic screwdriver up in front of him and turned it on. The light switched on, but no sound came out. He changed the settings, bringing it to his ear.

Not a thing.

He looked around the cell irritably, and scowled at the offline control panel beside the door. Someone had certainly been expecting him. A cell that negated sound. That was very clever, he had to say. Made the sonic screwdriver useless, and also stopped him from using his mouth, which he found was oftentimes more useful.

He sighed (silently), and rested back on the bed, hands behind his head.

Time to start using the old brain, then.

* * *

(A/N: All thoughts and reviews are welcome, folks!)


	3. The Others

Disclaimer: I don't own _Doctor Who._

_**Dominoes**_

_**Chapter Two: The Others**_

The blades made that pleasant scraping sound as they sliced through the hair on his cheek. Taking a moment to stare at his reflection, General Pierce washed the blade in the sink before continuing.

It was three days now, by his count. Three days of this blank, grey-white room, and still no sign that anyone else was here.

But he wouldn't give them the satisfaction of acting any differently. No. He would behave with the same self-respect and dignity he had held himself with his entire life. His uniform still meant something, damn it. Even if the country it belonged to was God knows where by now.

But there was still that little clutch of fear in his heart. One that made him wonder if he was going to hear a dead, cold voice booming from hidden speakers.

"_Ten percent. We want ten percent of the children of this world."_

He sighed and rubbed his eyes. That wasn't helping.

He couldn't stop himself from thinking it, though. What if they somehow knew he was alive? What if that Brit politician, Frobisher, was in another cell somewhere, with the Prime Minister in another? All of them, held accountable for their deal with the devil, _by _the devil?

Pierce hissed as he cut too deep, blood seeping out from the small gash. He pressed a towel to it, waiting patiently for it to stop.

Whatever had brought him here, they knew about humans. A bed, a toilet, a sink, a shower tucked away behind a sliding door… someone wanted him alive, and comfortable. Even food, although the grey paste and water he was given once a day was hardly the definition of the word.

After he had stopped the bleeding, he finished shaving and got dressed, leaving the heavy jacket on the bed for the moment. While the medals and rank insignia were a powerful image, right now he needed flexibility, just in case today was the day someone would come in.

Not that that was guaranteed. No-one had come into his house to bring him here. One moment he was picking up a strange metal egg from the kitchen floor, the next he was blinded by light, stood in this room and the device burnt out in his hand.

Sat on the bed, he rubbed his hands together and bowed his head. Maybe today would be the day.

But he doubted it.

* * *

The two of them watched the beeping vitals monitors of the human general. The others were sleeping. Particularly the one behind the first monitor. She certainly enjoyed her sleep more than most.

Most, boast, host.

He supposed he wasn't being the best host in the world, not even introducing himself. But he wanted to make sure everything was in place before he started moving them around and making things interesting. But now, the Doctor was here.

_That _made things interesting. He hadn't seem him yet. But still, he could see the double heartbeat, taunting him, waiting for him.

He sighed, and his companion twitched, almost seeming irritable. So accustomed to responding to the slightest movement with violent force… it was probably a considerable effort to hold himself back. If he could be called a _he_.

Why not put it out of it's misery?

"It's time," he said, looking to his companion. Ha. Companion. The irony.

"Let them out."

* * *

Katie absently poked at the hole in the knee of her jeans. That hadn't been there a few days ago. Was it a few days? She couldn't remember. Whatever, these jeans were getting irritating. Classic Top Shop, that was what the store vendor had said.

Of course, he was selling plastic Ood brains, too, so maybe it was her fault for listening to a word he said.

In fact, it had irked her at the time, the whole plastic Ood brain thing. She had been as smug as anything when word came down from the Ood-Sphere that all Ood transactions were coming to a halt.

_About time_, she said.

_It was a sick practice, anyway_, she said.

_Humans don't need slaves,_ she also said.

So, having said all that, she _still _bought jeans from the man selling plastic Ood brains. And then, about an hour later, she was here, shopping bags and all. At least she had had plenty to occupy her mind with over the past few days. Once the initial terror for her life had settled down, of course.

From what she could see, there wasn't any surveillance in these cells. Which, personally, she found a little odd, but what the hey. The doors were locked and looked very heavy, too, so maybe the people in charge were just _that _confident. Although why they thought they needed all of this to contain _her_ was beyond anything she could understand.

On top of that, she wasn't entirely sure why they wanted her at all. Brown hair, brown eyes, not particularly tall or pretty… it wasn't like she was part of any heavy political movement, and she hadn't ticked anyone off who _was _involved in any heavy political movement…

Bizarre, in a word.

And that was when the wall started glowing.

Katie sprang to her feet, and almost considered going for her shopping bag.

_Good priorities there, Dell._

The glow of the wall moved towards her, and she realised it wasn't the wall glowing; it was a barrier of blue light that ran the length and height of the wall. A force field. No-one used force fields. Well, no-one except _very _rich people.

But, right now, the wealth of her captors wasn't really an overriding factor in her mind. Her concentration was mainly focused on the fact that the force field was coming _towards _her, and would probably crush her into the wall.

It edged closer and closer, and Katie backed up to the wall, frantically looking around for an escape. The force field was curving in from the right now, looking to trap her in the corner of the room.

She stepped forward and pressed a hand to the force field. Her palm couldn't quite make contact, like two magnets north to north. Balling up her hand, she tried slamming a fist against it, which bounced back with the same force and hit her in the face.

Crying out more in irritation than pain, Katie backed up to the wall again, and found something amiss; the wall was further away.

Turning around, she saw that the door was open.

She looked back to the force field, and realised it was guiding her towards the door.

"Opening the door would have been enough," she muttered, taking a step back and blinking as the door slammed shut in front of her.

Damn. She left the Top Shop bag in there. Of all the rotten…

Katie stopped thinking for a moment as she turned around, confronted by the bleached white room around her. She felt like she was in a drum. A very shiny, white drum, but still… a drum.

She was on a walkway that ran around the middle of the drum. There were doors all around it, probably about twenty or so.

Only four of them were open, each of them with a different person stood outside. A few doors down from her on the right, an imposing black man wearing an antique military uniform was already overlooking the floor below, large hands grasping the guardrail of the walkway in frustration.

Halfway around the circle, a young man (well, a boy, really) not much taller than her and a little on the podgy side looked around, equally if not more bewildered than herself.

At one o'clock was another man, this one with wild hair and big eyes that seemed to be taking in everything all at once. He offered her a massive, cheery wave.

"Hel-" he stopped and looked surprised, hand brushing his throat. Then he grinned. "Oh, brilliant, I can hear myself again, at last! But yes, anyway, hello!"

She waved back, a little unsurely.

Closer to her on her left, an older woman looking significantly worse for wear staggered out of her room, squinting from the white light and appearing terrified. She barely seemed lucid.

All the doors slammed shut behind their previous owners, and there was a pause.

"Oh, that's interesting," the odd man said, slipping on some glasses from somewhere inside his jacket. Who needed glasses in this day and age?

"What is?" the man beside her said, a strong old-American twang in his voice.

"The architecture," Mr Odd (good a name as any) said, pointing a finger up and moving around in a circle, taking it all in himself. "It's familiar, don't you think?"

"No," Mr Military said definitively.

Mr Odd didn't look impressed. But before anything more could be said on the matter, two force fields activated, one beside Mr Odd and another next to the older woman. They started moving around the walkway, pushing all five guests gradually closer together.

God, the woman smelled. Although she didn't seem too fond of Katie and Mr Military herself, trying to keep as far away from them as possible as they walked.

Across the way, she could see Mr Odd walking backwards with hands in pockets, studying the force field intently. When he bumped into the boy still stood dumbly at his door, he nodded his head to indicate which way to walk. Nodding frantically, the boy did as he was told, walking alongside the increasingly odd Mr Odd.

Eventually they ended up on a glass square platform, all of them pressed together by the force field.

Uncomfortably so. From where she stood, Katie could make out that the force field extended up to the ceiling while also going down below the walkway and to the floor of the 'drum' below, ensuring no-one was going to fall off on the way down.

All she could see down below was a table at one side of the circle. The other half was left blank, with only one door in the middle of the wall drawing her attention.

Someone rubbed their hand against her rear.

"Do you mind?" she hissed, and the boy mumbled a surprised apology. Katie felt a little guilty, since he clearly hadn't done so deliberately.

Mr Odd grinned.

The elevator reached the bottom floor. The force field on Katie's left disappeared, and the one on the right slowly pushed them all off. The lift promptly took off without them, shooting up to the walkway and staying there.

Nobody moved.

Well, nobody except for Mr Odd, who sauntered about as though he owned the place. Mr Military seemed more intrigued by the man than the situation they were in, although Katie couldn't blame him. The way he was treating everything as a mild curiosity, like it was just another day…

The man's coat billowed a little as he went to the door on the other side of the chamber. He peeked in for just a moment.

"Toilet. _Metal _toilet, too. Looks cold," he announced loudly, before trotting over to the table. He threw his coat onto the back of a chair and slumped down into it, emphasising the point by resting his feet on the table, crossing them casually.

Again, nobody moved.

It was Mr Military who finally broke the silence, walking over to the table and sliding into a seat opposite Mr Odd. He leant forward, fingers interlaced tightly in front of him.

"What's going on?"

Mr Odd looked askew at him, taking off his glasses and slipping them away. "I thought you didn't think it was interesting."

"Don't give me that. This has something to do with them, doesn't it?"

"'Them'? What do you mean? Them?" he asked, nodding to Katie and the two other prisoners stood behind her.

Mr Military was getting impatient. "No, not-" He took a breath. "No. The…" After a cursory glance at them, he lowered his voice and muttered something.

Mr Odd looked intensely curious, like a dog that had dug up something strange. "The 456? What's that, then?"

Looking exasperated at Mr Odd's demeanour, Mr Military took a breath through increasingly stressed nostrils and leant back in his chair.

Katie cautiously started making her way over, and the others gradually followed suit.

A smile graced Mr Odd's features, and it looked oh-so-natural on him.

"Yes, that's the ticket! Everyone take a seat. We haven't even introduced ourselves yet!"

The young man sat at the head of the table, keeping an equal distance between Mr's Odd and Military. Katie sat closer to Mr Odd, just a single seat between them. The only one who hadn't even moved was the older lady.

Mr Odd looked to her, and gestured with his head for her to come over.

"Come on," he urged gently and lightly, like he was talking to a reluctant child. "We've got to at least know each other's names, or we'll never get along."

She moved a few steps closer, but stopped just short of the table.

"Suzanne," she said, almost inaudibly.

"Suzanne. Nice to meet you, Suzanne. I'm the Doctor."

Katie blanched. "Doctor who?"

"No, just… the Doctor. As in, definitive."

"Not pompous at all, then?" she said, smiling.

The Doctor almost seemed to laugh along with her, but an inexplicable look of sadness crossed his face.

"I'm Simon," the young boy suddenly blurted out, looking a little surprised with himself. "Simon Teal."

The Doctor nodded, and looked to Katie.

"Oh, um… Katie Dell."

And then it was Mr Military's turn, who just sat with arms folded, staring at the Doctor.

"General Pierce of the United States Mili-"

"Yep, right, good, just need a name, thanks Pierce," the Doctor said quickly, leaving the General looking more than a little peeved.

"Right!" the strange man continued, clapping and rubbing hands together. "Before we start, does anyone know why we're here?"

Silence descended, and everyone looked at each other. Except Pierce, who had settled on a default setting of 'glare at the Doctor'.

"No? Right. Just thought I'd check. On to other business. Does anyone recognise what this place resembles?"

He looked around eagerly, but no-one was ready to answer.

"Anyone?"

"A… drum?" Katie attempted.

The Doctor opened his mouth to shoot it down, but then nodded. "Actually, it does look like a drum. I like that, 'The Drum'. That's it's name now. Well, our name for it. Well, that's what _I'm_ calling it from now on, anyway. You lot can call it what you want. But no, what this place _actually _resembles is the beacon."

Pierce frowned. "The beacon? What beacon?"

"The… beacon that brought us here." When no-one seemed to agree, the Doctor continued. "About the shape of an egg, but with the round bits at the top and bottom chopped off? Flashing red light on it?"

Recognition registered for Katie, as it seemed to for everyone else.

"It was on my living room floor," she said.

"In my car," Simon agreed.

Pierce was beginning to give up on his anti-Doctor grump and leant forward. "Kitchen."

All eyes fell on Suzanne, who looked more than a little ashamed.

"Alleyway," she managed, although Katie wasn't sure how many of them heard her.

The Doctor nodded. "And I found mine transmitting a false timey-wimey signature."

"A what?" Pierce said irritably.

"Timey-wimey," the Doctor replied, as though it were obvious. When it became clear no-one else thought it was, he waved a dismissive hand. "Never mind. The point is, the technology of the beacon and the Drum are linked. Same design, same people."

"But… that still doesn't tell us who this is," Katie pointed out.

"It's the 456," Pierce insisted, and the Doctor frowned at him.

"Oh, all right, honestly, who are the 456? That's clearly not their _actual _name."

"No," he admitted. "It was the designation of the frequency we used to talk to them. They never told us their name."

"All right, so… what did they look like?"

"We…" Pierce sighed and looked around the room, clearly frustrated. "I don't know. They were surrounded by blue mist the whole time."

"Right, so… you don't have their name, and you don't know what they look like."

"No."

The Doctor seriously seemed to think about it, his cheeks puffing out thoughtfully as he rested his head on his hand.

"Did you see any of their technology?"

"Just a… column of fire in the sky."

A look of realisation crossed the Doctor's face, and his hand dropped from his chin. "And the 456 used it as a means of transportation?"

_Now _Pierce was interested. "Yes."

"One minute they weren't there, then suddenly they were?"

"Yes, yes!" the General enthused, a small, hopeful smile creeping in.

The man sat next to Katie was breathless for a moment before groaning disappointedly and sitting back in his chair.

"Well, that doesn't help, there are loads of species that can do that."

Katie became worried that the General would leap across the table at the Doctor.

"Well, if it's not them, then who?" he asked quietly, jaw clenched.

"Not sure. Very generic, this place, have you noticed? Like they built it from a kit."

"Like a Sanctuary Base?" Katie asked.

The Doctor looked at her, first confused and then impressed. "Exactly like a Sanctuary Base."

He grinned at her, his smile lingering a little longer than it should have, and Katie couldn't help but smile back.

"Um…"

They both looked to Simon, who had a polite hand raised.

"Oh, don't bother with the hands, Simon," the Doctor urged, looking pained by the formality. "We're not in a science class."

"Oh, um… sorry. I just, uh…" He cleared his throat. "What's a Sanctuary Base?"

"Yes," Pierce said slowly, "I'm a little curious about that."

Looking a little worried, the Doctor leaned forward, waggling a finger back and forth between Simon and Pierce.

"You two don't know what a Sanctuary Base is?"

"No," they chorused, unintentionally. Pierce looked at Simon like it was his fault, who shrank accordingly.

The Doctor didn't notice, and had already moved his attention to Suzanne. "What about you, Suzanne? Ever heard of it?"

"Um… isn't it from Captain Scarlet?" she squeaked.

Now Katie was the one who was lost. The Doctor, however, seemed perfectly up to speed.

"No. Well… maybe, actually. That might be where they got the name, come to think of it. I'll have to ask Gerry. But that's not what I'm talking about."

Looking to each and every one of them with equal intensity, the Doctor spoke.

"Now… you might find this a bit of a strange question, but could you tell me today's date? We'll take turns. Left of the dealer goes first, so, Suzanne. What's the date?"

She looked awkward, more so than before. "Um… I don't know."

"Oh, come on!" Pierce barked impatiently. "You must have some idea."

"I don't, um…"

The Doctor leaned over sympathetically, scowling at Pierce as he went. "How about a year, Suzanne? Just a year."

"I think… um… 1982?"

Katie and everyone else at the table exchanged curious glances. Except the Doctor, who nodded contemplatively. He turned to Pierce, as did everyone else.

His eyes still on Suzanne, Pierce slowly looked over at the Doctor. "May 3rd, 2009."

"Right… Simon?"

"Uh, I uh… it was, uh… November. 13th, November 13th, 2193."

And finally, all eyes were on Katie. She suddenly found her mouth very dry, and struggled to get the words out.

"July 5th, 4134."

Everyone sat in silence, even the Doctor, although he looked more curious than absolutely dumbfounded and terrified.

"And what about you, Doctor?" Pierce asked, almost making it sound like a threat. "Where… _when _are you from?"

"Oh," he croaked dismissively, "I'm from all over the place, me. I'm a bit of a… traveller… hermit… person. But last time I checked, Katie's date sounded about right. You know about the Judoon, yeah?" he asked, suddenly looking to her for support.

"Uh… yeah. Humans have known about the Judoon since 3354 and the Pluto incident."

"Right, so yeah, that's… yeah, that's where I was last. Well, not where, when. But what's interesting here is that you're all from different eras. Completely different, and, judging by your ages, not much chance of crossover between you. What planet were you on when you were taken?"

They didn't go in any particular order this time, although Pierce and Suzanne seemed a little taken aback by the question.

The answer was the same from everyone.

Earth.

"Four unrelated humans plucked from different times, different places… but all of you on Earth when you were taken."

"Five," Katie pointed out.

"Hm?"

"You said four. There's five of us."

"I don't count. I'm just an anomaly here."

Pierce tilted his head. "How can you be so sure?"

"Because my beacon was specifically designed to draw me in. Not many people have the technology to pick up a blip in the time stream, and there are next to none who would actually bother to look into it. And the Judoon sent to secure me were looking _for _me, by name."

"Why?" Simon asked, rather brazenly for him.

"Exactly," the Doctor concurred, jumping to his feet and pacing around like a trapped animal.

"Why gather four humans from across time and then stick me in the middle? What's the connection, the reason? Who gains from it? When you put four humans and me in a prison together, what do you get?"

"Annoyed?" Pierce suggested, which made the Doctor grin.

"I'm not sure yet if I like you or not," he said. "But for now, I'm going to take that as a joke because it's funny. Well, I say funny, it's sort of amusing. Well, I say sort of amusing…"

Katie looked between her fellow prison inmates. "So… what happens now?"

The Doctor whirled around, pointing a finger at her. "That, Katie Dell, is what we in the medicine trade call a good question."

He looked around the Drum, turning 360 as he did so. When he came back around to face her, he looked even more perturbed than before.

"A _very_ good question…"

* * *

(A/N: Hey all, glad to see you're enjoying it so far. Hopefully you'll stay on board, I'm very curious to see your reactions to some of the twists and turns coming up.

Anyway, reviews please!)


	4. Break Time

Disclaimer: I don't own _Doctor Who._

_**Dominoes**_

_**Chapter Three: Break Time**_

His coat (and its contents) splayed out in front of him like a picnic blanket, the Doctor sat cross-legged with the sonic screwdriver in front of him, pointed up to the ceiling. Something was wrong with it. Or something was wrong with everything else, he couldn't be sure.

"What is that?"

It was Katie, crouching down beside him. Craning his neck back, the Doctor saw Simon fruitlessly trying to sleep in his chair and General Pierce pacing around like a caged animal, hands firmly clasped behind his back.

"It's a sonic screwdriver," he said, giving the offending device a few slaps. "And it's not working properly."

"I used to have one of those."

"Really?"

She nodded. "Sony."

"Rubbish. You want to go custom." He grinned, tapping the screwdriver against his forehead. "Never fails."

"Except right now."

He scowled. "Well… _yes_, right now it seems to be failing me.But sometimes things interfere with it. Not many things, but still… it happens."

"Like what?"

"Um… another sonic device, maybe… hairdryers used to irritate it, but I thought I fixed that," he noted, frustrated with the device. Oh, the hours he had spent leaving a hairdryer on in the TARDIS while he tinkered with the screwdriver. And _still _it refuses to work.

He noted Suzanne out of the corner of his eye, trying desperately to stay unnoticed from quite a few feet away.

Katie moved her legs around so she was sitting on both knees, apparently finding it more comfortable. "So what's wrong with it now?"

"Not sure," he admitted, looking up to the ceiling. "I'm thinking there's something all around the Drum stopping the signal from getting any further out. It can detect everything in here just fine, but if I try and scan beyond the walls…"

"…nothing."

He nodded.

"Can you turn off the force fields?"

"Thought of that, tried it, didn't work," he sighed, looking at the screwdriver more with a look of dejected acceptance. It didn't look like he would be using it to get out of here anytime soon. He slipped the device away.

"Do you know why?"

"I'm _guessing," _he said slowly, resting his head on his hand,_ "_it's because the emitters are outside the Drum."

The girl nodded, staring at the wall in thought. The Doctor enjoyed watching people when they were thinking; there was something so brilliant about watching the lights flicker away in their eyes as one possibility was taken in, considered, then discarded, only to be replaced by something else. It was something that had made humans so fascinating all those hundreds of years ago when he first set off in his TARDIS; Time Lords were usually so good at hiding their thought processes, they were positively dull by comparison.

"So is there a force field _outside _the Drum?"

"No way to be sure."

"Hm."

He nodded. "Yeah…"

Shifting about a little, she looked to him. "So what's your name?"

He frowned a little. "The Doctor. I said. Before. Remember? At the table?

She gave a startling approximation of Sarah Jane's 'stop being so condescending' scowl before speaking. "No, but I _mean… _Doctor is a just a title. What's your name?"

"Just… the Doctor. Honestly."

"What, so your first name's 'The'?"

"No," he scoffed. "I'm just the Doctor. Honestly, it's not hard."

"Fine. I'm calling you 'The' from now on."

He gave a wry smile before hopping up to his feet and walking to the wall. Acutely aware of how everyone in the room was suddenly watching him, he ran his hands along the smooth white surface. Felt like porcelain, only much thicker.

The Doctor shot back to his coat, snatched out his stethoscope, and pressed it to the wall. After rapping his finger against its surface and moving the receiver around a few times, he came back from the wall to find that Pierce was asking him something.

"Hm?" he said, yanking the earphones out. "Sorry, had things in my ears. What were you saying?"

"Have you found a way out?"

"What, this fast? Come on, give me a chance, I'm only human. I'm only using that as a turn of phrase, understand. Don't want you thinking I'm something I'm not."

Pierce looked like the Doctor had winded him. "You're not human?"

"Well," he groaned, having a distinct feeling this wasn't going to go well, "now that you mention it… not really, no."

The General's hands were on his lapels and slamming him into the wall before he could do much else, knocking the stethoscope from his hand.

"_You're _behind this, aren't you?"

"Oh, that's right, go for the first non-human," the Doctor moaned, rolling his eyes. "Honestly, you military types. I've met about five who are agreeable. _Five. _That's a bit shameful, don't you think? Considering they're always trying to take over negotiations in first contact situations, you'd think they'd have to be more open-minded."

"Don't you mouth off to me!" he barked, thick American accent echoing all around the Drum.

Over the General's shoulder, the Doctor could see Simon peering over nervously from where he sat at the table on the other side the room.

"I want you to tell us why you've brought us here, and what this has to do with the 456!"

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "Oh, for… look, if _I _was the one who did this, 1: why would I lock myself up in here with you, and B- wait, no… sorry, 2: why would I tell you I was an alien when you would just kill me? Hm?"

A comparatively small hand came to rest on the General's shoulder. Stressed veins throbbing at his temples, Pierce glanced at Katie.

She looked positively petrified, as though he may go for her next. The Doctor didn't think so, though. As much as he found military types distasteful, he knew that Pierce was just acting out of fear.

Didn't stop him from finding the General very tiresome, though.

"Look…" Katie said steadily, visibly trying to keep her gaze locked on Pierce's, "I don't know what you've got against non-humans, but… he _does _seem to know what he's doing."

"Exactly," the Doctor urged, although a little more gentle this time. "Give me a chance to get us out. If I can't, then feel free to beat me to a pulp. Sound fair?"

Breathing heavy but calming down, Pierce glared at him for a few tense moments longer before another quick glance at Katie made him relax and let go. The Doctor slipped to the floor, and only then realised that Pierce had managed to lift him off his feet. Strong fella. Might come in handy.

The General stalked off, heading for the table. Simon vacated quickly (wise boy) and let Pierce take a seat wherever he pleased. The young boy scurried over to them, curly hair bouncing a little as he glanced between Pierce and the Doctor.

"That was…" he pointed to where Pierce was sat, arms folded and staring intently at the table. "That right there? That was scary."

"_You _thought it was scary," the Doctor mumbled, turning back to the wall. He reached for his stethoscope and remembered he had dropped it.

Turning around, he found it waiting for him in Suzanne's gentle hands. He offered her a smile as he gratefully took the stethoscope.

"Thank you."

She just nodded, almost imperceptibly. The others didn't seem to pay her much mind, which irritated the Doctor a little bit. The human capacity for ignoring the less desirable aspects of their society was something he had never really appreciated about them. Mostly because it was how the Time Lords has viewed him, once upon a time. Usually _he _would be the one being ostracised, so it always tweaked him when he saw it happening to others.

Although, it could also be put down to the smell. Although the Gallifreyan sense of smell was much more sensitive, Time Lords had the ability - as with so many other senses - to just ignore them without too much difficulty.

The Doctor tried to push aside the pity he felt for Suzanne, because if there was something he couldn't stand from others, it was pity. Treat others as you would like to be treated.

He tried to stick to it, but most of the time he failed.

"What are you looking for?" Simon asked, edging away from Suzanne a little as he spoke.

"Nothing," he mumbled.

There was a pause, presumably as Simon and Katie exchanged a glance. "Nothing?"

"Yeah…" This was getting annoying. Concentration was difficult to achieve with humans wittering on in his ear.

Blimey, that sounded a little too much like Six.

"Doctor?"

"What?" he said, a little sharply.

Suitably chastened, Simon shut up. Katie, however, wasn't going to pay his rudeness any mind.

"Why are you looking for nothing?" she challenged, rising to his irritable comeback. Good girl.

"I'm _not_ looking for nothing, I'm checking for something. I just wasn't looking for a specific thing. Now, if you'll just…"

Instead of finishing his sentence, he just tapped his finger to his lips. Once he was fairly sure he would get no more interruptions, the Doctor rapped his knuckles against the wall again. He slowly started to move along the curved wall, tapping his fist against it as he went. Slowly but steadily, he made his way around.

He sighed.

This was going to take a while. He pulled out the sonic screwdriver and used that to resonate against the wall instead. Using his knuckles would get tiresome after awhile. Not to mention painful. The screwdriver would give him a more accurate reading anyway. Measuring the thickness of walls was a very precise art.

"Doctor?"

"Hm?"

"How long are you going to be?"

"Oh, sorry, Simon, have you got somewhere to be?"

"No, I just… wanted to know if we could talk or not."

Feeling a little bit like what Donna would no doubt call 'an arsehole', the Doctor nodded.

"Yeah, Simon. Yeah, you can talk. Just keep it down, I need to… hear things."

* * *

Watching the Doctor work was an interesting experience. He seemed all at once engrossed in what he was doing, but equally prone to distraction at the slightest provocation. His shoe scuffs against the wall by accident? Apparently worth a look. An irritated one, at that.

"Weird," he said quietly.

"What?" Katie asked beside him.

"Him."

Katie looked to the Doctor, who was now squatting _and _pressing the side of face against the wall, flicking his little torch thingy off and on before shifting just a few inches to his left and repeating the process.

"Yeah, but… he knows what he's doing, right?"

Simon looked at her. "He's not even _human_."

"And?"

"You're kidding, right?"

"What?"

"He's an alien. An _alien_."

Still looking a little bemused by the whole conversation, Katie just shrugged. "…_and?_"

"And… aliens invaded the planet forty years ago! I mean, we haven't heard anything since, but, still… alien invasion!"

"Quiet at the back, please!" the Doctor warned. As he turned back to the wall, he seemed to think of something and half-heartedly added, "Simon, you wouldn't happen to know anyone by the name of Susan, would you?"

Completely befuddled by the question, Simon looked to Katie just to confirm that it _was _a weird question. Her expression made him feel a little bit better.

"Uh… no. Why?"

"Oh," he said loudly, "no reason, don't worry about it. I ask everyone that question. Katie, do you know a Susan?"

She opened her mouth to speak, but he cut her off, barely letting the sentence stop.

"No? All right, never mind. See? I ask everyone. I'll ask Pierce and Suzanne later, you watch." His gaze lingering on them a little longer, he slowly turned back to the wall, before slyly throwing over his shoulder, "Oh, and the correct term is 'Daleks'."

Still wierded out by the earlier question, that extra little titbit at the end just pushed him over the edge. Gesturing frantically but keeping his voice down, Simon looked to Katie. "See? He knows! That's what I'm talking about!"

"So what?" the girl dismissed again, parking herself on the ground and undoing her ponytail. "You know about it as well."

The way she was throwing her hair about as she re-did the ponytail was very distracting, and Simon tried to concentrate on what he was saying.

"Well, yeah, but… I know about it from history books."

"So do I. Official friendly first contact was-"

He put up a hand, scrunching up his face. "Wait… do I… want to hear this?"

Finished with her hair, Katie frowned up at him. "How do you mean?"

"I mean will this mess up… time, or something? I've seen enough TV shows and movies from the archives to know that talking about future stuff can be bad."

She shrugged.

Simon suddenly felt a little dizzy from the implications of messing up the space time continuum as he knew it, and slumped to the floor beside Katie.

"Let's not take the risk, huh?"

Katie laughed a little in response, then dropped her head to pick at something on her shoe.

They both watched in silence as the Doctor continued on, the whirr of his device suddenly a lot clearer.

"So, uh…" he dared a few glances over at her, and found she was looking right at him. Which just made things more awkward, really. He wasn't really used to pretty girls paying attention to him. "…what, uh… what's it like in the 42nd century?"

Looking a little taken aback by the question, Katie blinked a few times. When Simon actually thought about the question, he supposed it was sort of a weird one.

"It's… home. Nice, I suppose."

"And aliens are everywhere?"

"Not… _everywhere_, but they're not uncommon."

He felt a mix of excitement and caution rise up in him. Sci-fi nerd's dream as it was, the actual reality of it was pretty daunting. "And everyone's okay with that?"

"Well… yes. And we don't call them aliens, we just call them by… whatever they're called."

Simon nodded at the Doctor, who was now lying on the ground, face pressed into the corner as he shuffled along the floor like a worm.

"And him? What would you call him?"

"Um… the Doctor. I mean, he _said _he wasn't human, but there are quite a few species who look like humans."

Simon nodded his agreement. "If he hadn't said so, I would have thought he _was_ human."

Smiling a little, Katie leaned over as if to divulge something when the entire room exploded in sound.

Pierce was on his feet in an instant, glaring at the Doctor. "What did you do!?"

The alien man was also on his feet, letting the stethoscope hang around his neck as he backed away from the wall. "It wasn't me, I didn't do anything!" He looked at the device in his hand and put it to his ear. "I don't _think _I did anything…"

Blue light encompassed the room, reflecting from the wall of energy now moving towards Katie and Simon. The older lady, Suzanne something, was also stood nearby, and backed away quickly as it approached.

His hand unconsciously holding onto Katie's arm, he slowly started backing up in tandem with her, mindful of the table behind them. The wall continued to follow them until they were on the other side of the Drum, all five of them stood in a cramped row.

He looked to the Doctor, since he seemed to be the only one who didn't get freaked out by these events.

But he was just watching the other side of the room with an intense frown. Following his gaze, Simon saw that a hatch had opened on the wall they had just been stood beside. Four black plastic trays were pushed through by an unseen hand (or machinery, he couldn't tell). On each tray was the same grey paste and plastic cup of water that he had been served since he arrived here.

On the one hand, it was good that they were feeding him. On the other, he had no idea _what _they were feeding him.

Job done, the hatch closed, and the force field blinked out of existence.

Nobody moved except for the Doctor, who instantly raced over to the other side of the room, slipping on his glasses as he almost skid to a halt in a crouch before the now-invisible hatch. He ran his hands over it intently, fingers grasping for some kind of seam or break in the wall. The way his hands dropped and his shoulders slumped suggested there wasn't much success on that front.

He took out the screwdriver thing and poked it against the hatch, pressing his ear to it. Simon didn't see his face, but he heard the Doctor mumble something to himself before turning on the spot, still crouching as Suzanne moved to the first tray.

Simon and Katie followed suit, their stomachs urging them on rather angrily. While Suzanne was content to eat her food sat on the floor, Katie and Simon moved to the table. They both watched as Pierce slowly walked to where the Doctor was poking at his serving of paste.

"I believe that's mine," the General said.

"Hm? Oh, right you are."

"Why didn't you get one?"

The Doctor poked out his bottom lip for just a moment as he thought about it, looking back to the hatch as he did so.

"Don't know," he said, getting to his feet and looking Pierce in the eye. "Not that I get hungry very often, but still… makes me feel singled out! Never did like piggy in the middle."

Ignoring the comment, Pierce slowly picked up his tray, took it back to the table and started eating. After tossing his stethoscope onto his coat, the Doctor slipped into a chair at the end of the oval table and watched them eat, his eyes staying on the food rather than them.

After a few minutes of hungry silence, Pierce glared over at the Doctor. "What?"

The Doctor, ignoring the angry outburst, just continued staring at the grey paste on the end of Pierce's spoon.

"What is that?"

Everyone looked at everyone else, until they all looked back to the Doctor, clueless.

"I'm not sure," Katie said slowly, looking a little wary of the food now. "They started giving it to me a few days ago, after I first arrived. I was just so hungry when it came through the door, and it smelt and tasted okay, so…"

The Doctor produced a rather ornate looking spoon from his jacket pocket and leaned across the table to Katie's tray.

"That's a… shiny spoon," Simon noted.

He grinned. "Do you like it? I got it from Henry the Eighth when I had dinner with him. Well, I say had dinner with, he thought we were catering staff and put me to work in the kitchens. Can't imagine why. Might have been the long scarf, I never was good at blending in back then…"

"Doctor…" Pierce droned, looking ever the impatient military man.

"Hm? Oh! Yes. The food. May I?" he asked, pointing the spoon at Katie's tray.

She looked a little reluctant at first, but then nodded. "But just a little bit."

The Doctor nodded his head to the side as though to say 'fair enough' before scooping some of the paste onto the tip of his spoon. He brought it to his face, inspected it, sniffed it and even tried listening to it before finally stuffing it into his mouth.

He froze and spat it onto the floor. After a few moments beneath the table, he reappeared, his face looking like everyone else was insane.

"That's not food," he said simply.

Simon poked at his serving with his spoon. "I dunno… I mean, it's not pizza, but…"

"No, I mean… it's _not food._ As in, not meant for consumption."

Pierce put down his spoon. "What do you mean?"

"It-" the Doctor huffed a little while he tried to think of an explanation. "It would be like eating… a brick, or a, or a… _window_, or something. It's just… well, you _can _eat them, but they're not meant for it, just like _that_," he emphasised, nodding at the food, "is not meant for eating."

Getting a little worried about what he had been eating over the past few days, Simon put down the spoon and pushed the tray away from him.

"Then what is it?" Katie asked.

The Doctor tapped the spoon against his cheek thoughtfully. "Don't know. It's not there to keep you healthy, but it's obviously doing something, or they wouldn't be giving it to you. And I take it the taste doesn't bother you?"

"There is no taste," Pierce said cautiously, still grasping the spoon like a lifeline.

Their alien companion nodded thoughtfully. "How often do you get it?"

"Uh… I think… once a day, maybe?" Simon looked around the people at the table, and to Suzanne, who was sat behind the Doctor on the floor. She had finished hers, and was now beginning to look like she regretted it.

The incredulous frown on the Doctor's face wasn't helping Simon's nerves particularly, either.

"Once _a day_? And you haven't been hungry in-between?"

"Well, usually…" His throat suddenly dry, Simon swallowed. "…usually only just before the food arrives."

In what was quickly becoming a recurring motif, everyone around the table looked at everyone else, this horrible sinking feeling surrounding them. Only the Doctor seemed immune, just staring off into space, inscrutable eyes clearly elsewhere.

Another alarm noise sounded, and everyone looked up, no-one being able to muster the energy to stand.

The force field sweeping towards them from the other side of the room served as quite a good motivator.

Everyone was on their feet in an instant, the Doctor rushing back to his coat and gathering everything up before slinging it over his shoulder and joining the group again.

"What's it doing?" Simon muttered.

"Back to the lift," the Doctor noted, looking up at the descending platform. "Playtime's over, back to school, I suppose."

They watched the force field approach them in a sort of resigned silence. Some of the questions the Doctor had been asking and raising in Simon's head… he was glad to have some time alone to think about things, to be honest. On the other hand, he had time alone to think about things. He over-thought stuff like what shirt to wear to a party, let alone the fact that he had been eating brick-window slush for the past three days.

As the force field passed over the table and the food, the Doctor spoke, abruptly knocking Simon from his thoughts.

"Speaking of which, I've got some homework for everyone."

They all looked to him with interest, even Pierce.

"Tomorrow - well, I'm _guessing _they'll let us out to play again tomorrow, socialising and exercise and… stuff, it's good for you, apparently - when the force field comes to push you out of your room, check if it goes _over _the bed or _through _it."

"Why?" Katie asked, eyes on the force field as it came disturbingly close to them. They all backed up to the lift, which had now arrived properly.

"Well, if it goes _through _it," the Doctor said, standing at the back of the platform and watching neutrally as the force field bent around them into a cylinder shape, "then I've got nothing. But if it goes _over?_"

He smiled, nodding to himself in that way people did when they had a potentially amazing idea but didn't want to spoil it yet.

"Well, I might _just_ have found us a way out."

* * *

Simon tried to sleep at what he guessed was the usual time for him. It was hard to tell in here; the light switch was at his disposal, so his captors didn't decide his sleeping hours for him. It was down to him to choose when he went to bed.

Not that he would be able to get much sleep tonight, anyway. _Way _too many stressful thoughts. Not to mention the fact he hadn't changed his clothes for three days. He _had _showered though, but he wasn't sure if dirty clothes cancelled that out or not.

A noise from the other side of the room interrupted his train of thought, and he sat up in his bunk. Slipping out of the stiff covers, he pressed the large button on the wall beside the door, bringing the lights up.

It sounded like scratching coming from the other side of the room, near the entrance to the bathroom.

Breathing anything but steady, Simon crept forward towards the sound. The wall was blank, just like the drum. It was possible that there was another hatch here somewhere.

Maybe it was some rats in a ventilation shaft or something.

Maybe it was a way out.

Then the hatch opened. There was something silver inside.

In an instant, it was on his face.

Then, nothing.

* * *

(A/N: All credit goes to Derek Metaltron for reminding me that Simon's home timeline is 40 years after the Dalek Invasion of Earth. I'd also like to throw out a disclaimer that I wrote Katie calling the Doctor 'The' _before _I read MakeLoveNotSense's wonderful 'Time Was' ficlets. No plagiarism intended!

But yeah, anyway, what did you like, what didn't you like… keep on reviewing, it's great!)


	5. Testing, Testing, One, Two, Three

Disclaimer: I don't own _Doctor Who._

_**Dominoes**_

_**Chapter Four: Testing, Testing, One Two Three**_

Pierce walked out of his room of his own volition this time around. He wasn't content to let a force field push him around and show him where to go. It was a futile gesture, he knew, because he was still walking to get away from the energy wall that pursued him.

But still, it made him feel better. And precious little was doing that right now.

He had paid attention to the force field, as the Doctor had said. It had gone over the bed, not through it. There was the barest of gaps between them, but it was there. What relevance this had to their escape, Pierce had no clue. Right now, all he could do was sit back and rely on the Doctor.

Jesus H Roosevelt, how he hated this.

He didn't even know who or what this Doctor was. How did he know so much? And he seemed very familiar with humans and their culture. Although, going simply on appearances, he _could_ walk around Earth and learn without anyone batting an eyelid. Except for his incredibly odd behaviour, of course.

Looking around the walkway and to everyone else's rooms, he found there were two people missing. One was that Simon boy.

And the other was the Doctor.

Silently, Pierce made his way to the elevator platform along with Katie and Suzanne.

"Where are they?" he asked, looking to Katie as they descended.

"I don't know. They could still be in their rooms. Maybe they're just not being let out today."

He snorted and shook his head, and the elevator touched the ground. The force fields deactivated, and they moved off. The older woman went straight to the table and sat down, resting forward on her arms and trying to get some more sleep.

Pierce was also on a mission, and moved straight to the hidden hatch in the wall where the food had come from. He crouched down and rapped a fist against it, trying to remember exactly where it was.

"What are you doing?"

He glanced over at Katie, who was stood just behind him, watching curiously. The way she asked, though, was more incredulous, as though he were insane for even _daring _to try and escape while the Doctor wasn't around.

"The Doctor and the kid are most likely dead."

"They might-"

"I don't deal in 'might'," Pierce said curtly, walking to the table. "'Might's make you indecisive. Slow."

He grabbed a chair. Suzanne was awake now, watching him curiously and a little bit fearfully.

Katie, who had been following him across the room, pursued him back to the hatch.

"I don't think that's a good idea."

Already frustrated with the current situation, having a twenty-something year old girl with a shrill voice going on in his ear didn't help. He whirled on his heel, glaring at her. "The Doctor's been thinking since he got here, and where is he now? Dead, or maybe even worse. Who knows what the hell those creatures are doing to them right now?"

Feeling his point was made, he started for the wall again.

Katie followed along, apparently unaffected by his earlier outburst. "You still think it's that 456 you were talking about before?"

"There's no way in _hell _I'm letting them turn me into a drug," he muttered.

He almost swung the chair back, but then stopped when he noticed Katie still stood behind him.

"You might want to step back. That's another 'might', but I think you should pay attention to it."

Looking every bit the young upstart, Katie finally relented and took a few steps back, arms folded in a way very reminiscent of his ex-wife.

The thought just gave him more strength as he swung the chair as hard as he could against the hatch. It bounced against the wall uselessly, and Pierce stumbled a little from the kickback.

Taking a deep breath, he went to swing again when the same alarm as before sounded. A force field dropped down in front of him, swinging around and pushing him towards the corner of the room. It moved too fast for him to walk with it, and it knocked him over on its way to the wall.

The chair bouncing along the ground with him, the field finally stopped when he was completely encased between the wall and force field. He stood up. There was barely enough room for him to do that. Fists balling, he made to hit the blue wall of energy.

But, thinking better of it, he settled for sighing, getting the chair upright and sitting down.

Katie was still watching him with her arms folded, although there was a certain air of satisfaction about her now.

Even _more _like his ex-wife.

Sighing again, he buried his face in his hands, rubbing his eyes. He was tired.

Damn it. Now _he _was wishing the Doctor was here.

What the hell had happened to him?

* * *

"Hm."

The Doctor made the noise in the vain hope that somehow, the sound dampening around the room had been switched off and he would be able to hear himself again. Which would also mean his sonic screwdriver would work, and he would be able to get _out _of these four walls.

The fact the sound dampening was even around his room said to him that there was something in there that could be loosened or broken by a sonic screwdriver. Something he would be able to use to escape.

Although he hadn't seen anything so far, he suspected it was another hatch like the one outside.

And speaking of which, the force fields were exactly one hour, twenty three minutes and six seconds overdue. Hence the aforementioned (and unheard) 'Hm'.

Silence wasn't pleasant. He didn't enjoy it, especially when it was just him by himself, engulfed in it. It was _bad _when it was just him and the thrum of the TARDIS, or just him and some barren landscape, barely a whisper of a breeze brushing past him. But this…?

This was disturbing. And 'disturbing' was very hard to out-think or out-talk. It was just there, constantly niggling at the back of your mind while you were trying to concentrate on opening the locked door in front of you.

Just as the thought fired out of a synapse, something grabbed him by the collar of his jacket and yanked hard.

In 0.42 seconds (Time Lord instincts were difficult to turn off sometimes), he was somewhere else. Just… somewhere else. No transition period, no flashes of light or blurs, just his silent cell and then a hissing, dark, dank corridor, pipes running along the roof and right hand wall as far as the eye could see. Even a Time Lord eye, which was saying something. Well, thinking something.

Something twigged. He could hear hissing.

"I can hear hissing!" he announced. Rewarded by the sound his own voice, he grinned happily. "Oh, at last! Bindle stitch! Glottal stop! Gorgonzola! Ah, that's better."

Looking around, he found a peculiarly white wall running along one side of the corridor, very much at odds with the scummy brown of the pipes beside him and the gantry beneath his feet. It almost looked like…

"The Drum," he muttered, slipping his glasses on and running his hand over the wall. He couldn't find any kind of seam or break in it, although he hadn't been able do that with the hatch inside the Drum. But still, he would have thought that the other side of the hatch would have had hydraulics or some-such pushing it to and fro. Although that depended on where outside the Drum he was.

Diving a hand into his jacket, he pulled out the sonic screwdriver and scanned around. He couldn't get much, just that the place was big. It would take him a little longer to get a good reading of everything. He eventually turned all the way around, the screwdriver pointing down the other end of the corridor.

And in the face of someone new.

"Oh, um…" He realised the screwdriver was shining rather insistently in the man's face, and switched it off, putting the implement away for the moment along with his glasses.

The man didn't say anything, so the Doctor nodded courteously, hands behind his back. He was never really a fan of shaking hands with new people; he never knew where they'd been, for a start.

"Hello. I'm the Doctor. Can I just say, you could have let me pick up my coat before you brought me out here, I do like being wrapped up when I travel."

His new companion's face twitched, his shorn head making the Doctor think of a rather more severe version of his ninth face. The black also helped with that, he found. His clothes looked like they could be from the late twentieth/early twenty-first century. Much like the Doctor's, really, except for the colours. Long black coat, black shirt, black trousers, black boots… all of it old, patchy, seams coming off at the collar and cuffs.

He wondered if the man was a cheery person at all.

"I'm assuming this place is yours?"

Silence.

"It's nice, it's um… well, tell you the truth, you've got quite an eclectic style going on here, which is sort of _my_ thing… you should see the state of my place, I've had it white, gothic, white, gothic again, coral, even I don't know what I'm going to go for next… probably white, if I'm honest. Always go back to the classics, I find."

Still nothing.

"…right. Well, if that'll be all, I'll just be off-"

A quick hand (although not quite as quick as the one that had… _something-ed _him out of his cell) grabbed his, and pulled it up to chest height. He pulled out a thin silver object, and the Doctor leaned in to the inspect it.

"Oh, a DNA sampler. Or a biro, it's hard to tell with those things-"

The man stabbed it into his hand with a little more rigour than was necessary.

"Blimey, that's a bit over the top, isn't it? I've got loads of swabs in my pocket, all you had to do was ask!"

Pulling out the sampler with equal speed, the man checked it over once before slipping it into his coat pocket and turning to walk away.

Cradling the hand, the Doctor rubbed the small puncture, shouting after the man. "Since there's no ink in there, I'm guessing you took a DNA sample, in which case you could at least buy me breakfast!"

He kept on walking.

"I'll stop you, you know."

_That _got him.

His head moved around eerily slowly, finally settling on an intense stare.

The Doctor shrugged, putting his hands in his pockets. "Just… to warn you. Y'know, so it's not a rude shock. I've often been told my manners are atrocious. I've been trying to work on it."

The man was striding towards him now, and only stopped once he was uncomfortably close. There was something horrifically tense about him, and the Doctor felt himself get a little more on edge just looking into his eyes.

"Still talking nonsense. I would have thought a different face would change you, Doctor. I find that death tends to do that to a person."

Unsure that he actually heard what he thought he heard, the Doctor blanched for a moment.

"Sorry?" he said quickly, ducking his head a little.

But then something tugged on his collar again, and he was suddenly in the Drum, stood in the middle of the communal area with the others staring at him, dumbfounded and shocked.

He knew the feeling. That man had been talking about regeneration. If the conversation had gone on, the Doctor would have denied any knowledge, of course, but it was fairly obvious that he knew about it. That statement couldn't have meant anything else. So the question was… did the Doctor know him? He didn't recognise the face, but that meant nothing these days. The man certainly seemed to know it was him.

That would be the reason he was here, then. Good old fashioned vengeance, maybe? Still didn't explain the humans, though.

A shaky voice came from behind him. "Um…"

Speaking of which…

The Doctor turned. "Hm?"

"Doctor? Are you all right?"

It was Katie, cautiously getting up from out of her chair. Suzanne was sat at the other end of the table, watching just as intently.

"Yeah," he said, nodding slowly. "Yeah, fine. Well… I think so, anyway…"

"You _think _so? What happened?"

Still a little dazed, the Doctor stared at the wall over her shoulder. "Oh, just popped outside for a little chat…"

"With who?"

"Well… that's the thing. Not quite sure."

"Was it a… what was it?"

"_It…_ was human."

Katie paused for a moment before shaking it off. "Look, anyway, Doctor, did you see-"

Something in the room was strange, and the Doctor's frown changed to curiosity. "Or something that looked like a human, anyway- is it just me, is there a force field on in here?"

Her enquiry paused for a moment while she smiled a little tiredly and nodded to the corner of the room. Following the gesture, the Doctor saw Pierce, fast asleep on a seat and encased behind a force field.

Despite the confusion from earlier, the Doctor grinned. "Ha!"

This disturbed the good General from his rest, who snorted a little before hazily coming around and spotting him.

"You! Get me out of here!" he barked, shooting to his feet and jabbing an angry finger towards the Doctor. The offending digit got caught in the field however, sending it flying back at him.

This just tickled the Doctor more as he sauntered over, getting up close to the field and looking it up and down.

"Sorry, nothing I can do. Emitters are outside the Drum, and the sonic screwdriver can't reach out there." Pierce was about to retort, but the Doctor turned to Katie before he could speak. "Why did this happen then?"

He glanced back.

"And why has he got a chair?"

"He went for the hatch," she said wearily, throwing a half hearted hand into the air.

"With a _chair_?"

Katie nodded, and the Doctor whirled back to Pierce. "Well, you get points for effort, but not for thinking it through. Very military, come to think of it-" and then back to Katie, leaving another Pierce retort hanging "-the hatch is over there, though. Did it push him into this corner?"

"Yes, but, Doctor, there's-"

His brain previously gummed up from mysterious men in big black coats talking like they knew him, a flurry of activity invigorated him, sending him around the room.

"It pushed him _and _the chair, which means the force field doesn't go through inorganic objects, it just moves over them, which means… and it pushed _him_ into _that _corner, so what happens if someone else does something wrong?"

"Doctor-"

"Katie," he said hurriedly, "pass me that chair."

She looked ready to speak again, but then stopped with an exasperated noise and grabbed the chair. Beckoning with his hands impatiently, the Doctor snatched the chair from her. He walked calmly up to the hatch, looked the wall up and down, and slid to the side.

"Doctor, that's not the-"

He hit the wall, and let the chair drop behind him when it rebounded. An alarm sounded, and he looked to Katie for confirmation that this was the same. She nodded, and as the force field swooped in around him, he noticed something behind her. Or rather, a lack of something.

"Hang on, where's Simon?"

"I was trying to tell-"

The Doctor didn't hear the rest owing to the force field abruptly shoving him into the corner of the room. He barely managed to stay on his feet as he jogged backwards into the corner. When the force field stopped, he looked to Katie a little breathlessly.

"Katie, where's Simon?"

"He didn't come out this morning. We thought…" She stopped to look at Pierce, who just stared back. "…we thought he was with you."

He shook his head, running a hand through his hair. "No, not with me. Blimey, wish I had a chair now. Can you two hear in your cells?"

"_Hear_?" Katie asked incredulously, baffled by the question.

"Yes, vibrations in the air hitting the eardrums, that sort of thing."

She didn't appreciate the sarcasm. "Yes, I can hear."

The Doctor nodded thoughtfully. "Did any of you hear anything last night?"

They both shook their head. Peering around Katie, the Doctor looked to Suzanne. "What about you, Suzanne? Hear anything?"

After a quick look of confusion as to why anyone was talking to her, Suzanne cleared her throat and spoke. The Doctor frowned and ducked his head a little.

"Sorry, I really can't hear you over there. Just come over here, it's all right."

She glanced between the two other prisoners before gently nodding and pushing herself up out of her chair and walking over. After a look at Katie that was half guilt and half meek, she edged her way around the young girl.

"I heard something like the hatch from yesterday."

"What, that one?" Katie asked, pointing to it. When she got a nod, she rolled her eyes. "Then why didn't you say so?"

"You didn't ask," the Doctor interjected in a warning tone, giving her a look that matched it. He returned to Suzanne. "Anything else, Suzanne?"

"No, nothing."

Mulling it over for a moment, the Doctor nodded and smiled. "Thank you."

"Wait a minute," Pierce demanded from the other side of the room.

The Doctor groaned and rested back against the wall, arms folded. He was beginning to dislike the sound of that man's voice.

"How did _you _hear it? The Doctor's room is closer to the boy's. If anyone heard anything, it should have been him."

"His name is Simon Teal, Pierce," the Doctor demanded impatiently, "and if you weren't so busy playing the angry General with _me_ yesterday, you would have seen they moved Suzanne to another room when we were shunted upstairs. I mean, come on, I know I'm brilliant and everything, but I think even _you _could have spotted that."

Suitably chastened (although he didn't show it), Pierce huffed a little and stared off at another corner of the room. Just then, his force field came down, and he leapt to his feet, looking up to the ceiling with a mix of gratitude and outright irritation at having been contained in the first place.

"How long was he in there?" the Doctor asked, withholding his amusement for another time.

"Uh, I'm not sure," Katie said. "I don't have a watch."

"You must have some idea," he insisted, getting a little impatient.

"Twenty-two minutes and eighteen seconds," Pierce announced loudly, holding up his wristwatch for all to see as he marched over. The others looked at him, surprised.

"It was veryboring in there," he added.

"Twenty-two minutes and eighteen seconds," the Doctor repeated, nodding to himself. "Plenty of time."

"There's something else," Katie said slowly.

Preparing himself for anything, the Doctor looked at her wearily. "What?"

"When you came back, one of the doors opened upstairs. I couldn't see which one, but I heard it."

"Did anything come out?"

"Just you."

"Just me." His eyes nearly bugged out of his head as yet more threads looped together. "Just me… just me! Katie, it was just me!"

He desperately wanted to pace around, but all he could manage were two steps one way and two the other.

"And what does that mean?" Pierce asked.

But the Doctor was gone, wrapped in his own thoughts. "That must have been how I was moved out, a hatch in my room. It had to be. Whatever it was grabbed me and _moved _me, there wasn't any teleportation involved, that's why there was no transition period… and when it came time to return me here instead of my room, they had to open the door to give whatever it was a clear path. So it was something fast. _Really _fast. I'd even dare to say really, really, _really _fast."

"Is that how Simon was taken? A hatch in his room?" Suzanne managed, looking for all the world like a mouse asking a lion to move its paw off its tail.

"Most likely."

Katie suddenly obtained this look of dread. "So… we each have a hatch in our rooms?"

The Doctor nodded.

"So they could come for us at any time… and being as fast as you say they are… we wouldn't be able to do anything about it."

He looked her in the eye, then moved onto the others, even looking to Pierce. "Except I won't let it happen. Katie, Suzanne… yes, even you, General Pierce of the United States Military. We are _all _getting out of here. And once we've done that, we're going to find Simon, and we're going to get him out too. All of us, escaping this place alive and then going home."

"And how are you going to do that?" Pierce said, although the sneer in his voice couldn't quite hide the note of optimism the Doctor's words had laced there.

"How else? I'm going to use the toilet."

While everyone looked a little unsure as to how to respond to that, the Doctor nodded at Katie.

"Now Katie, would you mind taking a chair to the other side of the room and hitting it against the wall?"

"Me? Why?"

"Well, Suzanne looks tired, and Pierce was stuck behind a force field for twenty-two minutes and eighteen seconds, and I'm stuck in here for a _further _twenty-two minutes and eighteen-"

"All right, all right," she sighed, jogging lightly across the room to the oval table. It took her a few seconds to grab a chair and stride over to the other side of the room before throwing it rather unceremoniously against the wall.

Another alarm blared out followed by yet another force field. But this one scooped her up and placed her in the corner on her side of the room.

The Doctor grinned. "Right, now I'm _definitely _using the toilet." He raised his head, and his voice. "Thank you, Katie Dell!"

She muttered something that he couldn't hear over the buzz of the force field.

He looked to Pierce. "Sorry, what was that?"

"She bruised her tailbone."

"Oh. Tell her I'm sorry about her coccyx."

To the Doctor's great amusement, Pierce very nearly relayed the message before clamping his mouth shut and glaring at the Doctor.

"What has the _toilet _got to do with any of this?"

"Patience, General, you don't want to spoil the surprise. For you," he said, before adding quietly, "or for anyone else."

He nodded, understanding. The Doctor reckoned using his title probably helped, too. These soldiers, so vain sometimes.

Job done, the Time Lord settled himself down for a further nineteen minutes and six seconds. He doubted there would be enough time to set the escape in motion today, but tomorrow?

Tomorrow would be different.

* * *

Pierce slept well in his room that night, military training forcing into him the importance of sleep before a big day.

Suzanne also slept well. She wasn't used to beds and regular food, no matter where it came from.

The Doctor didn't sleep at all. Half because he didn't need it, but also because he was staring at the wall opposite the door. Probably where the hatch was, and probably where that speedy hand came from that snatched him away and brought him face to face with… someone. Someone who knew him. Someone who knew about regeneration. Who was he? If he _had _changed his face, then he could be anybody the Doctor had met. And, facing facts, the Doctor knew he had done some terrible things to some terrible people. Any one of those could be a suspect.

Katie didn't sleep, either.

Because Katie was gone.

* * *

(A/N: And we're off! I was initially a little wary of waiting three chapters to introduce this character, but in the end, I feel like the story needed time to establish the four humans and the way the prison worked. Not to mention the gradual introduction creates more mystery, which is something I've always liked about _Doctor Who._

Well? Like, dislike? Reviews, please!)


	6. Dizzy

Disclaimer: I don't own _Doctor Who._

_**Dominoes**_

_**Chapter Five: Dizzy**_

Suzanne walked peacefully out of her door, unmolested by the force field steadily creeping across her room. Not that it had ever caused her problems. When she saw the wall of smooth, blue energy heading towards her the first time, she had moved away and out the door without hesitation.

Moving out of the way. Staying unseen, unnoticed. It was something of a skill of hers. Most people didn't want to notice her. She was an undesirable element in their comfortable lives. A reminder of how grim the world was outside their warm houses.

But she had long since stopped being bitter. In more recent years it had become a sort of resigned sadness, moving from street to street, alley to alley. New friends every day, even if some of them were weedy little cats or stray dogs.

Better than most people, anyway.

Although the Doctor seemed nice. He talked to her, used her name, looked at her when he spoke instead of mumbling an apology and patting his pockets hopelessly.

She smiled a little as she saw him stride out of his room, all bounce and energy. The long coat added a weight to him, she thought; he didn't look so slight anymore. This man looked like he could stand up to people, make changes.

Escape from a prison.

His face stayed the same when the big General emerged from his room, chest puffed out as though he owned the place. Denial. It was something Suzanne had long since stopped relying on as a survival technique. She wondered, if the Doctor couldn't get them out, how long it would take Pierce to stop putting up the front.

The Doctor's face dropped when the force fields came on and headed towards them, pushing them to the lift.

"Hang on," he shouted, shooting it skyward as though talking to the Drum. "We haven't got Katie yet!"

Suzanne sighed and moved along, shaking her head sadly.

When they reached the lift, Suzanne couldn't help but notice how big it now felt.

The vibrating grumble of Pierce's voice distracted her from such depressing thoughts. "She's gone, Doctor. Just like the boy."

"They've got names, Pierce, it's easy, trust me. Katie Dell, Simon Teal. They're real, they're here, and we're going to find them."

Even the Doctor hadn't dropped denial, it seemed.

"Right, your toilet plan. And what does that entail, exactly?" Pierce said disdainfully, not even bothering to hide it. The platform reached ground level as he spoke.

"You'll see, you'll see," the Doctor muttered, stepping off and heading for the table.

The chairs had been tidied up and place around the table again. The Doctor, ignoring the hard work of whatever had been in here, leant forward and pushed the table closer to the wall. After backing up a few times to check how close it was to the wall and making the appropriate adjustments, he leapt up on the table.

He shrugged his coat off and tossed it to the floor. With glasses firmly on, he looked around at the seats gathered around him, running a hand though his wild hair.

"Right, right, eight chairs, the table is… one metre, seventy three centimetres and sixty six millimetres, each chair…" His voice trailed off into nothing, but his lips kept moving.

Pierce and Suzanne just watched from the platform for a moment before the General took an authoritative step forward.

"Doctor…"

"Shshsh!" he hissed, jabbing a finger into the air, his face scrunched up in thought. His face exploded open when he was done, and he grabbed a chair from around the table and brought it up to him. Fumbling around in his jacket pocket for a moment, he eventually produced the little metal wand he had been fiddling with since he first arrived.

The chairs were basically like stools, just with a cushion for people to rest their backs against. As such, they didn't have legs so much as one thick metal base. The Doctor used the whirring device on the circular metal base of the chair, running it around and around like a chef with a mixing bowl. "Right, sorry, you were saying?"

Confused and clearly not enjoying it, Pierce scowled. "What are you doing?"

"Polarising the metal in the chairs and the table. Magnetics, yeah?

"Yes, all right, fine. Why?"

"Just wait, you'll see! I'll need your help for this, anyway."

Done with whatever he was doing, he slammed the base of the chair down in the middle of the table. He grinned, tongue between his teeth. Eyes still on the chair, the Doctor spoke to her.

"Suzanne, do me a favour and pass me another chair?"

After an unsure glance at Pierce, who was just staring at the Doctor in complete incomprehension, Suzanne did as she was asked and passed him up another one of the chairs. She trusted him. At the very least, it was something to keep them interested and active. Suzanne knew from bitter experience that boredom could lead to some terrible consequences, almost all of them resulting from the mind being left with nothing to do but collapse inwards.

The Doctor repeated the same process with the new chair, slamming it on top of the previous seat. He gestured for another. Before long there was a perilously tall stack of chairs in front of the Doctor.

Once it became taller than him, he scampered up like a rat, attaching yet more chairs to the top until it towered over him. Yet, miraculously, it didn't waver or threaten to tip over. The Doctor, once finished, leapt back down to the table. He wobbled a little upon landing, but then recovered fairly quickly with a big grin.

He looked to the chair-tower, then to Suzanne, then to Pierce.

"Well? What do you think?"

When he looked at her again, she shrugged. "It's… nice. Tall."

This seemed to please the Doctor quite a bit.

Pierce, however, wasn't having any of it, and stepped forward, thrusting an impatient finger at the chairs.

"And how is this going to help us?"

"Yes, I'm getting to that," the Doctor said irritably, waving him down. "Right! First, you'll need to understand some basics about force fields. Well, _these _force fields. Because what _you_ think of as force fields, they're not _really _force fields, they just think they are. They're like… the Quorn of force fields. They buzz, they crackle, they're made of energy, but in the end, they just don't have that finger lickin' chicken flavour."

Arms folded, Pierce continued his default expression of 'confused stare'. "I'd never seen a force field before I got here."

The Doctor's face dropped a little. "Oh. Well, doesn't matter, you get the general idea about force fields. They're made of energy, stop you from going where you're not supposed to… except these are quite special in that anything that strikes against them is repulsed with _exactly _twicetheforce. Now, some force fields nullify the kinetic energy in an object and stop it dead, or give you a shock, or just slow it down. But not these. Albert would have loved these."

"Who?" Pierce demanded, patience running thin.

"Einstein. Albert? You know… every action? Equal and… opposite… no?"

When neither Suzanne or Pierce seemed particularly forthcoming, the Doctor just sighed and shrugged.

"Never mind. It's not really equal anyway. He still would have loved it, though. The point is, when you throw something at these force fields, they bounce it back at twice the speed. So, now. When someone misbehaves here, they're pushed into the corners. So two of you making trouble on _this _side of the room," he said, waving a hand behind him, "will be confined to those two corners," he continued, throwing out a finger in each direction.

"…and?"

"_And… _that puts you opposite to the hatch over there." He nodded to the hatch behind them. "So, if something heavy enough - say, a metal toilet - was bounced off those force fields at sufficient speeds…"

Pierce raised a hand to silence him, arms still folded. "You're going to throw the toilet at it."

"Yeah."

"You?"

"Yes, _me_," the Doctor said, looking insulted and confused at the same time. "What?"

"You're not strong enough to throw a metal toilet."

_Now _he looked insulted. "I might be, you don't know."

"Not at the speeds you're talking about."

The Doctor groaned and rolled his eyes, although his entire head seemed to rock with the motion. Rather than say anything, he just pointed to the stack of chairs with a look that said 'This should be obvious, even to you'.

Suzanne suddenly realised. "You're going to throw it from up there!" she cried, then promptly calmed herself down.

The General beside her seemed quite surprised by the outburst, but the Doctor looked delighted.

"Oh yes! Metal toilet plus gravity, then repulsed across the room at just the right angle… allons-y! Instant escape."

Amazingly, Pierce didn't seem all that adverse to the idea, just nodding thoughtfully. "What are you going to do once you're smashed a hole in the wall? Won't a force field come for you?"

"Why would it? I didn't vandalise anything, I just dropped a toilet. This place is automated, everything scheduled. Never early, never late, everything always at the exact same time. So it clearly has some strict parameters running it."

"How do you know that?"

"Because I just stacked some chairs up on a table, explained my plan, and…"

Pierce, appearing a little more enthused, nodded. "Nothing happened."

The Doctor gave him a grin and a wink, which just perturbed Pierce. Ignorant of whatever effect he was having, the Doctor hopped down off the table.

"This place doesn't make judgement calls. It won't view me dropping a toilet on some force fields as a direct act of aggression."

"So there's going to be a hole in the wall. What then?"

Suzanne looked at Pierce curiously. He was quite eager now, the strategising and planning really bringing out the soldier in him.

Pulling out the screwdriver thing from earlier, the Doctor wiggled it about in his hands.

"And you're sure that'll work?"

"Well…" he croaked, being very sure not to look Pierce in the eye, "who's… really sure about anything these days? I mean, Newton wasn't _sure _about gravity, Lennon wasn't _sure _about 'I am the Walrus', and look how well they worked out. Actually, strike that last example. I told him it wasn't a good song, but typical John, he just did what he wanted anyway-"

"So you're…" Pierce laughed humourlessly and shook his head. "Let me get this straight. This might not even _work_?"

The Doctor groaned and rolled his eyes, which seemed to be becoming a recurring theme between him and Pierce. "Look, could you-"

And then, suddenly, he was gone. Suzanne heard a door slide shut above them. Pierce stepped forward.

"Doctor? What-" He looked to her. "Did you see anything?"

She shook her head.

"Great, that's great." Pierce threw his head skyward. "That's just Goddamn GREAT!"

He looked like he wanted to kick something, but upon remembering all the chairs were on the table, just settled for storming off to the other side of the room.

Suzanne sat down on the floor and waited. He came back before, she guessed it would happen again.

She _hoped_ it would happen again. She liked the Doctor.

* * *

"-please stop… complaining…" The Doctor trailed off and looked up and down the familiar corridor.

There was his new friend again, hands buried in his coat pockets.

"Get what you wanted, then?"

The man didn't reply. Par for the course, it seemed.

"So you're sure it's me, then?"

"Oh, yes," he said quietly, nodding. "I had to be sure, though. You're not above sending in others using those kinds of tricks. Although after the last time I was sure you'd learnt your lesson."

Studying him while trying to make it look like he wasn't, the Doctor nodded. "You'd think so, yeah…"

The man stepped in uncomfortably close, studying his face intently. "I would have rather seen you again with the face _I _knew, but this…" He nodded thoughtfully, piercing the Doctor's eyes with his own. "…this will do."

Now in full on defensive mode, the Doctor didn't budge, but kept the eye contact. "We've met before, then?"

"Oh, I'd say so."

"And yet I don't recognise you," he said slyly, unconvinced that this man was anything important.

He smiled patiently. "Of course you don't."

Something seemed to twig behind his blue eyes, and the man nodded. He backed up a little as he spoke, holding his arms out.

"Actually, you probably wouldn't. What do you think? I've undergone a bit of a regeneration myself."

The intense eyes drifted off for a moment, staring into space. "After what happened, I _had _to, really." His gaze locked back onto the Doctor again, this time far more maliciously. "Which you know, of course."

That disturbed feeling from earlier in his room was practically screaming at him now, and the Doctor felt a little bit off kilter. Sternly taking a hold of himself, the Doctor slowly slipped his hands into his pockets.

"And you are?" he asked quietly.

"Well, I decided after-" his entire head twitched a little this time, "-_what happened _that using _my_ name wasn't… appropriate anymore. I just wasn't that man. So I followed your example, Doctor. A title. Your title, actually."

"You're called the Doctor?"

"Not exactly. I'm Xon. In the ancient language of my people, it means 'Doctor'." He smiled. "I thought that _was_ appropriate. I always liked irony."

The Doctor just nodded slowly, wracking the languages he had catalogued in his brain. Nothing came to mind. The TARDIS' translation circuit had made him a little lazy in that regard.

"Travelling alone, I see," Xon went on, eyes boring into him. "What happened? You always seemed to like having groups of people around you. The Doctor and his friends, travelling around the universe…"

There wasn't really a reply that came to mind. His brain felt like it was doing back flips in his head, trying so hard to sort out what was being thrust upon it.

Xon stalked towards him, closing the gap. "This doesn't bother you, does it, Doctor? Not recognising me? Aren't you going to deduce my identity just from listening to the sound of my voice, the way I pronounce certain words, my vocabulary, my eyes, my hair, my face, _something?!"_

Flecks of spittle appeared on the Doctor's glasses.

Xon's heaving breath filled the silence.

Slowly reaching up (he had the feeling that Xon wouldn't react well to sudden movements), the Doctor removed the glasses and slipped them away in his pocket. Waiting for just a moment longer, the Doctor took a breath, looking up to the ceiling as though thinking about what to say.

Which wasn't far off the truth, really.

"Why are you here?"

His head twitched again. "What?"

"Here. In this place. With those humans in there." he said, nodding to the Drum. "Hm? What are they for, why them? What's so special about Simon Teal, Suzanne Coltrane, Katie Dell and General Pierce of the United States Military?"

Xon didn't reply.

"What, didn't you know? Those are their _names_. They've got names, families, homes, favourite foods, bad habits, good habits… and I suppose you're going to make them better? Help them? They're real people, Xon, you can't just-"

A heavy hand slammed into his chest and whirled him around, pressing him into the wall of the Drum.

"HOW DARE YOU TALK ABOUT REAL PEOPLE! HOW-" he silenced himself. Rage bubbling under the surface, he grabbed the Doctor roughly by the throat, forcing his head back against the wall.

"How dare you talk about families. After what you did." Holding him there for a few moments longer, he finally released him and took a step back. He watched the Doctor as he moved away from Xon, trying his utmost not to show the pain from the assault.

"I was wrong, Doctor."

"…about what?" he hoarsely replied, his throat sore.

"You _have_ changed. Before, you were just cold. Now…" He looked him up and down with disdain. "Now, you're much worse."

Staring at the man, confounded and frightened all at the same time, the Doctor stood up to his full height.

"Who are you?"

Xon brought up a slow hand and waved. "Goodbye, Doctor."

A little panicky, the Doctor looked around the corridor quickly. "Wait, no, don't-!"

But he was just shouting in the Drum, voice echoing hopelessly.

"Doctor," Pierce shouted, coming over from the corner, "what happened?"

The Doctor didn't reply. His instinct was to believe it was a bluff. People the universe over knew who he was. Hated him, liked him, whatever. It wouldn't be hard to put together a story that was halfway convincing. Although his knowledge of regeneration…

"Doctor?"

"Hm? Oh, nothing. It's not important. What _is _important," he said, gathering energy before dashing over to the table, "is getting out of here. I don't know about you, but I'm getting tired of these walls."

This seemed to energise Pierce as well, who slammed a fist into his palm. "That's more like it."

"Right, so if you and Suzanne want to got to the wall and start making trouble-"

"Woah, hold on. Why do we have to do it?" Pierce asked irritably.

After staring at him for an inordinate amount of time, the Doctor blinked back to life, resting back against the table.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realise you had an encyclopaedic knowledge of geometry and physics. But since you do, I'll be more than happy to get stuck behind a force field while you throw the toilet at precisely the correct point with the exact amount of pressure required. I'm also assuming you know how to rotate through the wider EM bands the sonic screwdriver can access once you've smashed through the hatch, because if you didn't… well, that would mean you're just being stupid."

There was just silence as Pierce decided whether or not to deck him. Eventually, he chose the more sensible, peaceful option, and walked over to the wall.

"Don't start yet, I need to fetch the toilet," he said over his shoulder, before turning back to Suzanne. "Nine hundred years I've been travelling in space and time, and I think that's one of the strangest things I've ever said."

She looked uncomfortable. "So… you want me to…"

"If you could. Oh, hang on," he scurried over to his coat and rummaged around in the pockets, eventually bringing out the hammer he had left in there from… actually, he couldn't remember. He had the strangest notion it had something to do with Ikea, but there were so many different species who liked that place - and needed help deciphering the instructions - it was hard to remember.

"Use this," he said, handing it over. "Might help."

He ran to the door on the other side of the Drum and got to work on the toilet. As far as he could tell, it didn't work using water, but rather pressurised air with sterilising gas in-between. The flow of the pressurised air and the gas he could deactivate with the sonic screwdriver. Once that was done, the toilet (well, just the bowl, really) was easy enough to detach.

A lesson to all automated prison designers; always deadlock the toilet.

Tucking the sonic screwdriver away, he hurried over to the table, the surprisingly heavy metal toilet weighing him down a little. While he rarely used physical force, it did irk him occasionally that he always got such physically slight regenerations. Offhand, he could only think of two incarnations that had been the least bit useful when it came to feats of strength.

His current body not being one of them. As such, it was a bit of a precarious struggle to clamber to the top of the tower of chairs, and even more worrying once he was at the top.

"All right," he announced, nodding to Pierce and Suzanne. "Make trouble."

While Pierce settled for kicking the wall, Suzanne gave the wall a timid tap. When she saw how much the general was getting into his part, she decided to attack the wall with a little more vigour, giving it a good whack.

The force fields shimmered out of the wall and scooped up the two, taking only a few moments to wedge them into their respective corners.

The Doctor had placed the table a little closer to the left corner when he had first come down, which was where Suzanne was now peering up at him through the force field. Her image wobbled and wavered like she was underwater.

He took a deep breath, and lifted the toilet. "Allons-y," he murmured.

He threw the toilet.

It fell for only a few seconds before bouncing against where Suzanne's neck would have been if not for the field. It shot off towards Pierce, who ducked in spite of himself as the toilet rebounded against that as well.

And then, within another second, it was through the hatch, leaving only the faintest wisp of dust trailing out of the brand new hole.

The Doctor grinned, arms outwards in celebration. "Molte bene!"

He scampered down the chair tower as quickly as he could before leaping off when he was at a safe height. He started running, and his smile disappeared when another force field appeared and appeared to be making a beeline for the gap.

"Doctor, there's a force field!"

"Oh, thanks Pierce, keen military training there, good to know!"

But it _was _moving distressingly fast. But then, so was he. While maybe not as physically imposing as other regenerations, he certainly excelled at the running. Sonic screwdriver in hand, the Doctor thrust himself forward with one final shove of his feet, launching himself to the ground in a forward skid.

His upper torso went through the gap as the force field approached. If the screwdriver didn't work, then the field would probably yank him in half. Although he had never tried, the Doctor didn't like his chances of regenerating new legs.

It was dark in the gap outside the Drum, and the Doctor couldn't really see what he was pointing at. He left the screwdriver on and rotated his wrist around. The sound waves hit something, which clicked, beeped, and did nothing else.

But, judging from the fact that no force field had lopped him in half yet…

He slid back out, and found that the power was out in the drum. Using the screwdriver as a makeshift torch, he made his way back to his coat.

All the while, Pierce was shouting at the darkness. "Doctor? Doctor, are you there?"

"Yes, over here," he said tiredly, waving the sonic around. After a few moments of fumbling in the dark, the Doctor managed to pick up his coat and put it on. Inside, he found a lighter from some concert he had seen with Rose. He went to a lot of concerts with that girl. Never used to. He used to wonder whether it was this regeneration that liked them or if it was just her influence.

And then she was gone, and he never thought about it again.

Flicking it on with one hand, he put the screwdriver away with the other. "Suzanne?"

"Here," she said quietly, touching his arm for just a moment before moving away.

"Right, good. Now, since the power's out we can't use the lift. We're going to have to go out through the broken hatch." He looked over his shoulder at the two of them, their faces barely visible in the flickering light. "No-one's claustrophobic, are they?"

They both said no.

"Good. Although, sorry, bit pointless asking really, since it's our only way out."

When they reached the hatch, the Doctor handed the lighter to Suzanne before he squatted down and jammed his head through.

"Doctor?"

It was Pierce again.

"Hm?"

"What if the power comes back on while we're in there?"

"Um…" he puffed out his cheeks as he brought his head back through. "Not sure. I suppose we'll just have to wait and see, won't we?"

He grinned and clambered on through the hole. Before long, they both followed. It was dark inside, but there was room for them to stand up as long as they shimmied along sideways.

The Doctor sighed. The glamorous world of a Time Lord.

* * *

(A/N: Hey everybody, thanks for all the feedback! Please review if you can, it's always much appreciated to hear what's working and what's not!)


	7. Fumbling

Disclaimer: I don't own _Doctor Who._

_**Dominoes**_

_**Chapter Six: Fumbling**_

As unorthodox and maddening as his methods were, Pierce couldn't deny the fact that the Doctor got results. Somehow. Although right now he was struggling to define what they were going through as 'results'.

Stumbling around in the dark while the Doctor made varying noises of 'oh', 'ah' and 'that's interesting' was not Pierce's idea of making progress. As far as he knew, the Doctor was just taking them for a jolly walk around the Drum before getting them locked in again. Whether it would be accidental or not, Pierce still wasn't quite sure. But as it was, the Doctor _seemed _to be the only one with the vaguest notion of what was going on.

So following the Doctor it was.

"Ah!" he announced, sounding triumphant.

Pierce felt a little bit more cautious about the enthusiasm, as the Doctor had misled them about five times so far with false hope.

"What is it this time?" he asked tiredly.

"A ladder."

Waiting for a moment to take that in, Pierce responded with a simple, "What?"

"A ladder. For… climbing and escaping."

His lighter having long since run out of gas, the Doctor pulled out his screwdriver device and shone it first onto his face and then onto the wall on his right. There was indeed a ladder, leading up to a hatch above them.

The Doctor grinned before switching off the device and scrambling up the ladder, the noise he made making him sound like an excited child running around upstairs. The hatch came up without any difficulty, flooding the narrow corridor with dingy white light. Although any light was welcome at the moment.

The homeless woman (at least, Pierce assumed that was her story) was in front of him and so was up the ladder first. He couldn't help but feel a little paranoid as he climbed up last, glancing over his shoulder as he went.

What he found up above wasn't much better, although there was light. A long corridor stretched out in both directions, the piping on one side clashing with the pure white of the Drum on his right.

"Well, wave goodbye to the Drum, everybody," the Doctor said, giving a little wave to the white wall by way of example. When no-one else followed suit, he jammed his hands in his pockets and got walking, heading in the opposite direction. The Coltrane woman followed on.

"Wait, hold on."

They both turned, one looking a little more impatient than the other.

"How do you know where you're going?"

The Doctor shrugged.

"I don't. I just know I can see a junction taking us away from the Drum in that direction," he said, nodding over his shoulder, "and that the corridor _that _way takes us on a tour around the perimeter of the Drum. So, you know, if you _like _being near the prison we've been in for nearly a week, then by all means, forge ahead. I'll just go with common sense though, yeah?"

With a wink and a glance at Coltrane, the Doctor turned and headed off again.

Biting back his angry (and, at this point, futile) response, Pierce just settled for clenching his fists a few times before stalking after them.

As they walked, the Doctor making infuriatingly random choices about where to go, Pierce noticed something odd about the place.

The silence, for one. No crew, no announcements coming over a PA system… no sign of life at all. It seemed like the complex was running itself, and doing it _very _quietly. Only the occasional hiss of steam from _somewhere_ reminded him that anything was going on.

But then, the Doctor had said he had been talking to someone before, someone outside the Drum. So obviously someone was in charge. Maybe whatever this species was, they only needed one to run an entire complex like this.

"Doctor."

This time, the alien didn't stop or even look at him as he spoke offhandedly. "Yes?"

"Where are the people running this place? Or, the aliens, whatever."

"Automated."

"Yes, but there must be somebody running things. Whoever it was you were speaking to before."

The Doctor dipped his head from side to side, as though literally weighing the argument with his head. "…yeah, but he didn't seem like the type. And anyway, he was specifically interested in _me_. If it _is_ him in charge, then there's no point to your being here. Or to whatever it is you've been eating for the past few days."

The word 'eat' seemed to have an effect on Coltrane, whose stomach growled violently.

Looking a little saddened by the noise, the Doctor rummaged around in his coat pocket and produced a box of Tic-Tacs.

"Sorry I don't have anything more, but I've learnt only to keep foods that last a long, _long _time. I tend to forget about food when it's in my pockets. I've had bananas in there for months sometimes. Never a good experience thinking you're reaching for a marble and getting that. Although it seemed to scare off the dinosaurs well enough."

"You've had food the whole time and didn't say anything? I haven't been eating!" Pierce hissed, stepping forward a little.

"You never asked," the Doctor replied, looking a little affronted. "And besides, it looks like your bodies have been conditioned by… whatever's in charge to survive better without food."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you haven't eaten in, what? Two days? And you're only feeling hungry now? Seems like someone wants you lot healthy."

Pierce felt a sinking feeling in his gut. "Why would they want us healthy?"

Eyes wide, the Doctor nodded and looked around the corridor. "Ah, now you see… _that_… is a good question."

"You'll find out, too."

The voice came from behind him, and Pierce nearly bowled over Coltrane as he whirled around.

Whoever he was, he looked like he was human. Much like the Doctor.

His shorn head and black clothes were very much at odds with the Doctor, however. Although they both seemed to share the same intensity, no matter what they were looking at.

But he wasn't the truly interesting part. Two men seemingly made of metal flanked him on either side, looking almost nude like shop window store dummies. Their faces were blank, leaving only the faintest impression of noses, eyes, and mouths.

And yet they seemed oddly… familiar.

"Raston Warrior Robots," the Doctor whispered, sounding agape with wonder.

"You know them?"

"No sudden movements. Just… slowly, very, _very _slowly, get behind me. Come on, you too Suzanne. Just… over here."

Loathe as he was to cower behind anyone, the caution in the Doctor's eyes and voice persuaded him to do as he was told, although he made sure he wasn't crouching behind him like some child. However, as he passed the Doctor, Pierce noticed he wasn't looking at the robots at all. He was staring at the man in the black coat, as though _he _were the real danger.

Pierce decided to keep an eye on him, too.

"So, Xon," the Doctor asked, bringing a hand up and letting it rest against one of the cables on the wall, "got a pair of Raston Warrior Robots, eh? That's rare enough in itself, but reprogrammed to serve, too? That must have cost a pretty penny. Was it worth it?"

"You have that the wrong way around, Doctor," Xon said slowly, clearly in no hurry. "I'm working for them. Well, I say _working_, that implies payment. This is," he allowed a cold smirk before continuing, "out of the goodness of my heart."

"And what do they need you for? Hm? For that matter," the Doctor said loudly, looking to the robots themselves, "what do _you _need _them _for?" He nodded to Pierce and Coltrane.

They didn't reply, although Xon filled the silence for them. "Doctor, please, they're advanced killing machines, not conversationalists. _That's _why they need me."

"What, to _talk_ for them? There are hundreds of computer programs that can do that."

Xon gave him a withering look. "_Please _stop taking things so literally, Doctor. What does conversation require?"

Puffing out a breath like a horse, the Doctor looked skyward. "Good diction, knowledge of a wide array of topics, an ability to be self deprecating-"

"It requires-!" Xon spat, before reigning himself in and smiling serenely afterwards. "It requires… imagination. That spark of individuality that they seem to lack because they're… well, they're _robots_, Doctor," he said slowly, making him sound like an incredible idiot for not noticing.

The Doctor ignored the patronising tone and just nodded slowly, as if in understanding. "Right… you plan for them, tell them how to accomplish… whatever it is they need. Because it's not about _want_, they're just drones, they don't have the capacity to want… they _need_ something."

He scowled and looked to Xon. "But why the humans? Why are they here? What possible use could they be?"

Xon just smiled and shrugged.

Looking a little irritated, the Doctor turned his head to Pierce, although still keeping his eyes on Xon and the robots.

"Do you recognise them at all?" he murmured.

Pierce was about to shake his head when something in the back of his mind told him not to. That featureless face… somehow, it was so damn _familiar_. Almost calling to him, reminding him of something he'd forgotten from so long ago.

"I… I'm not…"

"Pierce?"

Words failed him, and the Doctor had to say his name a few more times before he blinked himself out of it.

"Uh… I'm… not sure."

Instead of questioning it (as he was sure the Doctor would), the alien man just nodded thoughtfully before turning to Coltrane.

"Suzanne? What about you?"

Clutching the box of Tic-Tacs in her hands like a life line, she just shook her head, although it didn't look like she was saying no to the Doctor. She looked like she was denying what was in front of her.

"Suzanne?" the Doctor moved in a little closer to her, although he still kept his relaxed posture against the wall of cables. "Suzanne, what is it? Do you know them?"

She didn't reply for a few moments, but then blurted out, "Nightmares."

Blanching for a moment, the Doctor looked to the Rastons (and the strangely patient Xon) and back again. "You've… seen them in your nightmares?"

Coltrane nodded, panicky.

"For how long?"

"All my life."

He ducked his head, as though not quite hearing her. "All your-"

The Doctor whirled back around to face them. "What have you done with Simon and Katie?"

The darkness in his voice surprised even Pierce; it barely sounded like a question.

Xon's smile did nothing to assuage Pierce's nerves. "You'll find out on your own, Doc-"

"What have you done with them?" he repeated, just that little bit sharper.

The smile disappeared. "You'll. Find. Out. On. Your. Own."

For a few moments, the Doctor just stood there, fuming. But then something seemed to click in his head, and everything relaxed.

"Then why haven't you taken them yet?" he said calmly, nodding behind him. "Hm? Pierce and Suzanne? Those are Raston Warrior Robots. They could skewer me with those handy pikes they toss around, or nip in behind me, grab them and be gone. There'd be nothing I could do about it."

The thought hadn't really occurred to Pierce, but now that it had, he was putting serious consideration into finding some escape hatch. Fighting until the end for Truth, Justice and the American way was all well and good, but fighting against things that were faster than the eye could see? Pierce had his doubts.

Xon didn't say anything, and the Doctor continued.

"Which implies - to me, anyway - that you want the humans here for _me_. Because I'm the only anomaly here. I'm the only thing that doesn't fit. Why put me in the prison with the rest of them when they'd be much more secure without me messing up the whole thing? And it can't be that the Rastons want them free, because then why would they take Katie and Simon _before _the escape?"

A small smile had wormed it's way onto Xon's face, but he still didn't say anything. Which seemed fine with the Doctor, who just went on.

"So it's personal. But _who are you?_ Why me? What have I done to you to deserve… whatever this is?"

The smile vanished.

"I realise, Doctor, that regeneration tends to addle the brain… but I had hoped that you… _even _you… would have had the decency to remember an atrocity like that. An atrocity that _you _created. So many lives, Doctor. So many innocent people, just… _BLINKING _out of existence… all because of YOU!"

Pierce edged his foot back only slightly, as though that would somehow assist a speedy departure. The Doctor didn't reply, and didn't look like he was going to anytime soon. Back straight in a vain attempt to hide his anxiety, Pierce glanced at the Doctor while still trying to keep an eye on Xon and his robots.

"What does he mean, Doctor? What did you do?"

"…nothing."

Even Xon seemed surprised by that one. In a quiet and disturbingly threatening manner, he said simply, "What?"

"I haven't done anything. He's lying. Lying through all the spitting and the shouting and teeth-baring. Of course, I don't know why. Maybe he's heard of me and just wants to match wits. Is that it? Or… maybe he's being paid by someone else to try and get me all rattled and scared. Almost worked, but _honestly_, he's just being too vague, isn't he?"

"Because you should remember," Xon said gutturally, his voice little more than a growl at this point.

"Oh, yes, naturally. Unless, of course, _you're lying_, which, let's be honest, you are. So. Xon. Why am I here?"

As the Doctor spoke, Xon gradually relaxed, that small smirk from before gradually spreading across his face. Then, patiently biding his time, Xon took a slow, sweet breath before replying with just one sentence.

"River Song says hello."

Nobody said anything. Not a word. Only the occasional hiss of steam from somewhere down the corridor. Suzanne was transfixed on the robots, Xon on the Doctor, and the Doctor… only God knew what the hell he was doing. He looked like he could collapse at any moment.

Being the only one of any kind of sound mind, Pierce stepped forward. "Doctor, we have to get out of here."

Nothing.

"Doctor!"

Again nothing.

But then, finally, the alien blinked. "Have you got rubber soles on your shoes, Pierce?"

Momentarily befuddled by the question, Pierce blinked. "Um… yes, I do."

"Suzanne?"

She didn't reply, so Pierce checked. "She has, too."

The Doctor slowly nodded. "Good." Equally slow, he turned to face him. "Don't touch the walls."

With that warning dispensed with, he yanked out the cable he had been resting against for the entire conversation and jammed it into the metal grating beneath their feet. While all four of the people stood in the corridor were unaffected, the two Raston robots shook and twitched as Lord knows how many volts passed through them.

Then, pulling out the sonic screwdriver, he pointed it at a pipe above Xon's head, letting loose a column of steam directly in front of him.

Turning to them, the Doctor held out his arms to usher them along as he started moving. "Run!"

The shouted warning seemed to knock Suzanne out of her trance, and they all started running. Glancing over his shoulder, Pierce saw that Xon wasn't making a move to pursue. That didn't make him feel better, somehow. It just meant he had such knowledge of this place that he could catch them any time he wanted.

Looking ahead again, he saw the Doctor letting his sonic screwdriver lead the way, occasionally shouting directions and warnings about low pipes.

_Definitely _not feeling better.

* * *

It took them a good few minutes, but the Doctor finally managed to navigate them somewhere he thought the Rastons wouldn't be able to track them. At least, for the moment. With Xon helping them, they could probably find them at any time.

Using the screwdriver, he activated the door behind them, which slid shut obligingly.

"Where are we?" Pierce gasped, clearly unprepared for such physical activity.

Suzanne, on the other hand, seemed to be dealing with the running far better, although she was still breathing hard.

Resting a hand against the wall, the Doctor pulled himself along just a few steps before stopping in a daze, eyes staring off into the mess of cables on the wall opposite.

River Song. Xon knew River Song. No-one could know about that. At least, no-one who didn't know _him_. The Doctor himself had only met her once, and that was at the end of her life. From her point of view, the Doctor hadn't even met her yet.

But Xon had. He knew River Song, and that meant Xon knew some future version of him. The next Doctor.

He remembered that look in River Song's eyes when he would say or do something that was _clearly _not what her Doctor would do… she was expecting something different.

Xon was expecting something different. He had been expecting someone cold.

An atrocity. That was what Xon had called it.

"Doctor?"

Wait…

"Doctor?"

"'_River Song says hello'?" _

'Says'? Present tense? As in, right here, right now?

"Doctor!"

His head snapped up, looking to Pierce frantically. "She's here."

"What? Her?" he asked, nodding to Suzanne. "I know that, she was in front of me the whole time."

"No, River Song…"

The sonic screwdriver, held idly at his side so far, was suddenly thrust into the air, searching for life signs. He couldn't get much of a reading beyond the walls and the interference coming from the generators.

"Doctor, where are we?"

"Generator room," the Doctor said, slipping the screwdriver into his jacket as he walked around the grungy, thrumming chamber. Well, he used the term chamber loosely; it was more like walking around in a submarine.

"Won't they find us?" Suzanne asked, touching his arm just slightly.

The Doctor shook his head, keeping an eye open for any other doors or hatches. "Raston Warrior Robots track their targets through the electrical impulses of the brain and nervous system. Pump a lot of electricity into them, you get sensory overload. Hide in a place with a lot of electricity… it's like blinding them."

"But they've got that Xon… whatever he is helping," Pierce interjected. "What if he knows your plan?"

How could he have found River Song? Was this strictly after whatever happened on Xon's planet? Or did Xon have access to time travel?

Would River Song even recognise this face?

"Doctor!"

"What?" he snapped, and then, upon seeing Suzanne's defensive look, instantly regretted it. "Yeah, you're…" he cleared his throat gently. "You're probably right, we should keep moving. Just in case."

He led the way, long legs keeping him just far enough ahead of the others so they wouldn't bother him. Suzanne, bizarrely, was the one who kept up with him the best.

"What does River Song mean?" she asked timidly.

"It doesn't _mean _anything… River Song's a person. An important person. To me. She's important to me."

"And you think Xon has her here?" Pierce asked sceptically.

"Maybe. Not sure. Possibly. Don't know."

A frustrated breath escaped Pierce, which made the Doctor bristle.

"What about these Raston Warrior Robots?" he asked, making it sound like a demand. "What are they, where are they from?"

"The Rastons were an advanced war-mongering race, always looking for the most efficient way to end a war. No rhyme or reason, they just lived for it," the Doctor explained, eyeing the corridor around them and looking for some indication as to where to go.

"The Warrior Robots were their 'masterpiece', I suppose. Sent out across the universe, destroying everything they found and then reporting back to home base via downloads. They were the best thing since sliced bread. To the Rastons, anyway."

They stopped at an intersection, and the Doctor took them to the right, simply because his left hand was itching.

"Eventually, the combined enemies of the Rastons took action."

"Which was?"

"Not sure; it's a closely guarded secret. Long and short of it is that the Rastons were never heard from again, along with most of the robots. There were a few spread out across the universe that were suddenly left without orders, leaving them open to manipulation, capture, whatever."

"And you never thought to check what happened?"

His body was beginning to tense just at the sound of the General's voice, and he cricked his neck to relieve some of the stress.

"Oh, I don't know Pierce, it's not exactly high on my list of '101 things to see before I die'. The invention of the wheel? Brilliant. The first time someone dipped a Mars bar in batter? Molte bene. The mass extermination of an entire species? Maybe later."

Pierce snorted. "Glad to see you've got everything under control…"

The Doctor whirled on his heel, hands in pockets. "Right! What was I thinking? I should have let _you_ lead the charge this entire time! Should we go back to the Drum and fetch more chairs? Maybe we can throw them at the Raston Warrior Robots and see what they think, hm?"

He stared at them both for a few moments, but then saw the raw fear in their eyes, not just of him, but of everything that had happened today.

"Sorry. Neither of you deserved that." The Doctor paused. "Well, maybe Pierce deserved it a lit-"

The words caught in his throat as some random memory sparked in his head. All the Xon stuff had pushed it aside, which annoyed him a little because he had especially noted at the time to remember it.

"Hold on, Suzanne. You said you'd seen the Rastons in your nightmares."

She nodded.

"That's interesting, because you," he pointed a finger at Pierce for emphasis, "said you weren't sure if you recognised them."

"They…" he blew out a breath through his nose, shifting uncomfortably. "They looked familiar."

"But you can't tell why."

"No."

Suzanne put up a hand, and the Doctor didn't have the heart to wave it down. "Do _you _know why?" she asked.

He shook his head slowly, studying them both. "Not yet… but it's definitely the key to why you're here. All four of you."

"Do you know where they are?" Suzanne asked hopefully.

"I've got the sonic screwdriver on a permanent low-level scan, it'll tell me if it finds anything. But in the meantime, Suzanne."

He squatted a little so he was face to face with her.

"I've got a favour to ask you, because frankly, Pierce is going to say no."

The general stiffened a little, and the Doctor ignored it.

"What is it?" she asked, not at all bothering to hide her fear. The Doctor appreciated that more, in a way. Far better than Pierce's angry, violent instincts.

"I'm going to have a quick look in your head."

"Mind reading?" Pierce snorted. "Please."

"Yes, of course, being abducted by silver robots from another planet and forced into an automated prison full of force-fields is an average day… but oh no, telepathy's where General Pierce draws the line."

Suitably chastened, Pierce shut up and let the Doctor talk to Suzanne.

He moved his hands up to either side of her head, but waited for her consent before doing anything. She nodded, and he smiled in what he hoped was an encouraging manner.

"It won't hurt, it'll just feel a bit odd at first. If there's anything you don't want me to see, just imagine a door closing on it, and I'll stay away."

Gently, and with great care, the Doctor started moving around in her mind. It was a delicate thing, the mind. Especially the human kind, you could step on a proverbial butterfly in there and destroy everything that person was.

Which was one of the main reasons the Doctor tried to keep away from using it. But sometimes, it was needed. And right now, it most definitely _was _needed.

Because, the Doctor noted with a frown, there wasn't anything there. He opened his eyes, blinked a few times, and then dived back in again. Still nothing.

After two more tries, there was still nothing, so the Doctor dropped his hands and backed off, rubbing his face. Banging your psychic essence against a brick wall could make you feel a little groggy.

"Well?" Pierce asked carefully.

Staring at the unaffected Suzanne, the Doctor chewed the inside of his cheek thoughtfully. "Not sure…"

He reached for Pierce, who slapped the hand away.

"What are you doing?"

"Look, I need to double-check something. If you don't help, we aren't going to get anywhere. So just let me do what I have to, yeah?"

After engaging him with a futile glare, Pierce relaxed. Well, as much as Pierce could. The Doctor placed his hands on either side of the General's head rather firmly, not wanting the larger man to squirm or jerk away at a vital moment.

As it turned out, though, there was no vital moment. Because the Doctor couldn't find anything in his head either. No mental blocks, no defences, just… nothing. Like he was trying to read something without a brain, like a wall, or a, or a…

The Doctor stepped back, watching them both.

Or a robot.

* * *

(A/N: The reviews are much appreciated, everyone, keep it up!)


	8. Box of Tricks

Disclaimer: I don't own _Doctor Who._

_**Dominoes**_

_**Chapter Seven: Box of Tricks**_

It hadn't taken long to make his way around the steam churning down in front of him, although the cable had been more problematic, thrashing and writhing as it was. Eventually, though, Xon managed to get a firm grip on a rubber section of the cable and tugged it out of the grating below, carelessly jamming it in a wall just to get it out of the way.

What had taken longer was convincing the Warrior Robots _not _to shoot off after their targets.

They weren't going anywhere, he would say. There's nothing they can do, they're stuck.

And yet, the silent arguments came, blank stares directed at him as their heads bobbed from side to side in curiosity at the illogical nature of Xon's actions. Their reaction reminded him of himself when the Doctor would go off jabbering nonsense until suddenly everything he was saying clicked together and he saved the day.

Saving the day was subjective, of course. Saving the day for the Doctor could mean something entirely different for those on the other side.

They might even be innocent, simply caught in the crossfire of his self-righteous Time Lord ego.

"_I'm the Doctor, and this stops now."_

It did stop. Everything stopped. And he just walked away, faithful companion by his side. It was the pity. The sheer _arrogance _of it. He didn't even have the decency to defend himself, to be an ordinary man and try to justify what he did, no matter how weak the position.

He did no such thing. Instead, he just looked sad. Accepted what he had done and walked away, vanishing like dust in the wind.

Xon had taken the Rastons to the main lab, walked to their main project, and flicked one switch, turning off the dampening field. They had almost moved to stop him when the cogs of logic started working.

He had turned to them and simply said, "Why go to them when they'll come to us?"

The Doctor was predictable. Even with a new face, old habits tended to die hard. Especially when you were a self-righteous murderer.

* * *

Suzanne strode along behind the Doctor, his long legs and skinny physique giving him an advantage over herself and Pierce. No sooner had he finished with his mind reading session had something beeped in his pocket, preventing him from telling them whatever it was he had found.

Not that he had seemed all too enthusiastic about telling them. If anything, he seemed relieved when the sonic screwdriver started beeping away.

Pierce, naturally, was shouting questions about what was going on from behind her, the volume of the demands making her wince a little. It also filled her with fear. People on the street didn't shout very much; it didn't particularly help when someone was trying to remain unseen, unnoticed.

Loud people meant drunks or fights. Neither of which she particularly enjoyed. It also meant that anyone following her could track her much more easily. Now she was no expert on robots, but she had a feeling they could be good at tracking.

Although she sort of felt like she _was_ familiar with _these _robots. Raston Warrior Robots. Something about the name made her feel safe. But those faces… those blank, silver faces, unwavering, unblinking… they had been staring at her in her dreams for as long as she could remember. They never walked, that was always what haunted her when she was awake. They just… moved. Like they were on a conveyer belt, only somehow more eerie.

Hard to explain, feeling afraid and comforted at the same time. Much like trusting the Doctor, she found. On the one hand, it was nice to put her fate in the hands of someone who seemed to know what was going on.

On the other…

Well, he seemed to know what was going on. But he didn't want to tell her. He just looked scared whenever Pierce asked.

Although scared _was_ a bit of an exaggeration; he just pretended like he was going to answer and then acted as though the sonic screwdriver had done something amazingly different and shot off in the direction of whatever it was he was tracking.

The chase finally came to an end when the Doctor skid to a halt in a tall, cylindrical chamber. Gasping for breath, both Suzanne and Pierce looked to him as he just stared up, occasionally glancing at his screwdriver.

"Signal's definitely coming from up there…"

Looking up, Suzanne could see a thin slit of slightly brighter light coming in from far above.

"And how," Pierce gasped, "are we going to get up there?"

The Doctor pretty much ignored him as he looked quickly around the room, finally settling on a panel on the far side of the room. Walking over to it, he inspected it with his glasses on, sniffed loudly, then promptly slammed his elbow into it.

The floor beneath them started moving, and the Doctor, putting away the sonic screwdriver, just said, "Lift."

It took them up distressingly fast, unseen pistons and hydraulics gathering in noise the higher they went. She felt like they were heading for the ceiling.

…they _were _heading for the ceiling!

Just as Pierce put his arms up and crouched down, screaming 'Doctor' the whole time, the platform started to slow and the ceiling opened like a hatch. The lift came to a gentle halt in a chamber that looked almost exactly the same as the rest of the complex.

Except this felt more like a pyramid, four walls leading up to complicated apparatus in the ceiling, a large lens at the tip of a hanging, metallic sphere. The sparse, pale blue lighting didn't illuminate much, but it did enough for the Doctor to spot something on one of the walls.

Beeping screwdriver forgotten, the Doctor let it drop to his side as he tensely walked towards the wall. Suzanne looked around while she followed, Pierce doing much the same. The floor was the same metal grating that proliferated around the complex, cables and flickering red lights barely visible underneath. Looking to the other walls, she saw that two were blank, and something was on the third… almost hanging.

"Oh, Simon, I'm sorry," the Doctor whispered. "I am so, so sorry."

Her head whipped around, and, as she approached, she saw what the Doctor was talking to, suspended above him on the slanted wall.

It was Simon. Although he barely seemed human anymore. Suzanne's hand went to her mouth and tears welled in her eyes. His hands were gone, cables trailing into his wrists and keeping him hanging from the wall. The face, too, looked as though half of it had been torn off, cables trailing from there as well, along with the black snake-like wires leading to his belly, thankfully covered by his torn clothing. There was no blood. None. Like he was some horrific mannequin.

Pierce looked frozen. "My God… is that him?"

The Doctor looked over to the wall Suzanne had seen something hanging from before. She couldn't bring herself to look, because she knew what he was going to say.

"Yes. And Katie's over there."

While Suzanne couldn't bring herself to speak, Pierce had managed to overcome his horror and stepped forward to the Doctor. Although, Suzanne noted, he didn't get too close to Simon.

"What did they do to him? Why are all those cables hooked into him like that?"

Still not looking at them, the Doctor stared up at Simon, letting out a breath. "They're not hooked _into_ him. They're coming _out_ of him."

Removing his glasses and putting them away, the Doctor wiped a hand down his face, rubbing his eyes vigorously before finally looking Pierce in the eye.

"It's what the food was for. Preparing, converting, purifying… all so that they… so that _you _would be ready for this." He slowly turned, slipping the glasses away and looking at Suzanne now.

"I'm sorry. I am so, so sorry, I really am."

Visibly shaking, Pierce snatched his arm and turned the Doctor to face him. "What are you saying, Doctor?"

"I'm saying… you're not human," he said carefully, voice neutral.

Eyes glazing over, the general's grip melted away as he staggered for balance, finally settling for bending over with hands on knees, vomiting a thin trail of grey on the floor. He stared in shock at the liquid, unable even to wipe his mouth.

"That's the connection," the Doctor said, not looking at either of them, instead casting his gaze around the entire chamber. "That's why you four were taken. Hidden on Earth, given human disguises and lives and incredibly advanced artificial intelligence-"

Pierce lashed out with a roar, hitting the Doctor with a fierce backhand. The alien man took it without complaint, taking just two steps back from the blow.

"There's nothing artificial about me!" he practically screamed, spittle flying at the Doctor. "I remember my life, my family-"

"Your parents?"

"I-" Pierce stopped. Suzanne felt her legs go out from under her as she understood what the Doctor was getting at.

"…I'm an orphan," Pierce finished, shakily.

The Doctor nodded sadly, then looked to her. "Suzanne?"

She just nodded, not feeling the strength to do much of anything else.

"And I'm guessing Simon and Katie, too. Sent to Earth, disguised as human children to different places and different times, sufficiently spaced out so that no-one would notice… so that no-one would see the coincidence of it."

"But I'm still _me_," Pierce insisted, glaring at him. "I see things, I hear things. I'm _thinking _right now, Doctor, with my brain! I am still Austin Pierce, you understand me?"

"I know. Believe me, I know," the Doctor pleaded, stepping to him. "You two, you _four_, are just as human as you were a week ago, a day ago, a few minutes ago. You still think and feel and experience everything as a human. That's… brilliant, amazing! You've become so much more than just…"

"A bunch of spare parts?" Suzanne asked quietly.

The Doctor didn't look quite ready to agree with that, but didn't say anything to deny it either.

"What's the point?" Pierce asked, uttering it like a dark threat. "Why would those Raston things do this?"

Just shaking his head slowly, the Doctor looked to Simon, then to Katie.

"I don't know."

"I do."

The nonchalant voice echoed from the furthest corner of the room. Xon strode over to them rather leisurely, the two Rastons flanking him. They were moving in the same way she had seen in her nightmares, legs still, almost floating.

Once they crossed the lift, Xon stopped, and so did the robots. He nodded to one of them, and it looked to a patch of wall to the bottom left of Simon. A door-sized hatch opened, raising up like a heavy cat flap, light flushing in.

The Doctor, wandered over, a wary eye on Xon. Pierce hesitated, looking at the Rastons.

Xon waved a dismissive hand. "They won't make a move without my confirmation. And they don't have the power to throw their usual projectiles. Besides, you're too valuable. You're safe."

"It's all relative," the Doctor muttered.

Looking no more comforted by Xon's words than the Doctor's, Pierce nevertheless eventually made his way over. The Rastons stayed where they were.

"What is that?" Pierce said quietly.

"The home world of the Rastons," Xon explained, dismissive of both Pierce and Suzanne. Instead, he focused all of his speech on the Doctor.

"A planet ravaged by a surprise attack from their combined enemies. Putting their best minds to the matter, they sent something into the planet; a modified atmospheric converter that cut off the Rastons from their source of power…" he waved an expectant hand to the Doctor.

Looking extremely chafed upon, the Doctor sharply said, "Radiation from the atmosphere."

Xon nodded, smiling as though the Doctor had done him a great service by speaking.

"Even the organic Rastons had started to use it, allowing them to put aside such unneeded necessities like food and sleep. So, as you can imagine, the attack was quite devastating. Nearly extinct, they just sat there and waited for death, their enemies' ships preventing any attempt at escape. Not that the Rastons could have mustered the energy to make such an attempt."

Curiosity overriding her dazed head, Suzanne heaved herself to her feet and made her way over to what they were looking at.

They were in space. They were in space! She was looking at a planet below. A murky, grey planet, not unlike the paste she had been gobbling as a feast for the past few days. She fought down the nausea that washed over her as Xon resumed his speech.

"The truly vicious aspect of this converter was that it sent out a constant signal that kept the atmosphere the way it was. All seemed lost. But then," he smirked, "inspiration struck. They could build a machine to clear the atmosphere. The only problem was, in the time it would take to build the thing they would be dead. Gone. No more Rastons. But then, _another _inspiration struck. They had Raston Warrior Robots that were off planet. While _they_ did the work, the Rastons could put the entire planet into a temporal null field."

Pierce scowled, and looked to the Doctor. Although she was having a hard time following, Suzanne was content to allow all the talking to wash over her.

"It's a field of temporal energy," he explained quietly, "freezing the flow of time around you until some outside signal restarts it again. Takes a lot of power… or a lot of knowledge about time travel."

Xon rolled his eyes as the Doctor talked, but waited for him to finish before continuing on.

"The Rastons had another problem, though. How could they stop their enemies from destroying the machine before it was finished? Inspiration again. They would send the vital components of the machine to another planet, disguising them until they were ready. And by using time travel to send them, they were assured that they could fetch them back at any time without a risk of their enemies finding out."

Gesturing out the window, Xon smiled. "As you can see, their enemies lost interest after awhile. And, although there were several Raston Warrior Robots off planet at the time, only two answered the call. With the instructions downloaded into their minds, in addition to some… other influences, they finished the machine in record time, the entire complex hidden away in this asteroid. And here they are, nearly ready, _finally _ready after all these years to restore the Raston home world, and its people."

The Doctor, meanwhile, had started scowling halfway through the speech and hadn't stopped until Xon had finished talking, shaking his head in utter incomprehension. His eyes widened, and he stared at Xon, realisation gripping him.

"It was you. You were the 'inspiration'. Because the Rastons don't have access to time travel, if they did there wouldn't be a universe left."

Xon allowed the point to stand, tipping his head. "It took me a long time, but I finally managed to escape your… little _trap_. A side effect of which was that it flung me across time _and _space, landing me directly in the middle of the attack on the Rastons. The nature of your trap gave me slow, instinctive knowledge of how time travel worked. Using that knowledge, which I had accumulated over the centuries…" he trailed off, dark eyes boring into the Doctor.

"Centuries, Doctor. _Centuries. _Do you realise how long that is? How _long that is to live without anyone else!? DO YOU?!"_

Still not budging, the Doctor looked Xon right in the eye as he spoke.

"What did I do to you?" he asked, ever-so-quietly, as though trying to keep it confidential. Or maybe he was just terrified at the magnitude of the question, and what the answer would be.

"How dare you deny it," Xon hissed, trying to keep something that looked very violent inside. "How dare you pretend like nothing happened, like-"

But then, some distant flicker sparked in Xon's eyes, and he looked at the Doctor as though he were a different person.

"…like you don't remember it."

He moved in closer to the Doctor, studying him.

"You don't remember."

"Remember _what?" _the Doctor urged, throwing his previous caution to the wind.

A small breath of a laugh escaped Xon. "Oh, but this is… you're _younger! _I don't know how I didn't see it before, but my God, you're younger, you _are! _You're not him, you're…"

This time, Xon stumbled back as he stared at the Doctor anew. Then, just as suddenly, it was back to business as usual for Xon.

"It will be terrible, Doctor. And you won't offer any excuse. No reason, no explanation. You'll just wipe out everything I've ever known and loved. Every living thing on my planet, wiped out in an _instant _because of you."

"I don't believe you."

"Yes you do. I must say, you're a much better liar when you're older," he admonished, relishing every word.

The Doctor was at a loss for words again, and Pierce looked ready to do or say something he would possibly regret when the alien man faded back into life again.

"Was it your idea to send them to Earth?"

Xon looked a little bored that the Doctor was changing the subject, but eventually he nodded. "I provided the plan, the time travel, the technology… I programmed them, as well. The limit of the Rastons' skills ends with… well, them, I'm afraid," he said, nodding to the Warrior Robots standing to attention in the middle of the room.

The Doctor ignored him. "But why did you send them to Earth? You could have sent them anywhere, disguised them as any inanimate, harmless object across all of space and time. Why send _all four _to Earth? You must have _known _what would happen to them in that environment. They've become so much more than they were. They're _people _now, real, breathing, living _people_! You can't let them die-"

"Oh, but _they're_ not dead," Xon said calmly, glancing to Simon and Katie. "That life sign reading you picked up was accurate, it wasn't just me laying a clever little trap."

Suzanne looked to Simon. Saw his torn face, severed hands, his empty belly… he was _still alive?_

"You mean," the Doctor's head whipped around quickly, "you've kept them alive?"

"Conscious, too," Xon said casually. "They need to be for the process to work."

"_Conscious?!" _the Doctor cried, his voice holding a rage that seemed to unnerve even Pierce. _"They're conscious, and you've left them like that?!"_

When Xon said nothing, the Doctor jut stood, breathing heavy. Then, calming down, his voice took on a pleading, desperate tone, something Suzanne hadn't imagined she would ever hear from the Doctor.

"Xon. These are _people._ Real, living, _breathing _people. The signal from that atmospheric converter could last for hundreds of centuries; you'd have to leave this place running for all that time. You can't use them like this, leave them in that kind of pain for that long. You _can't_. Not even to save an entire race."

Xon just smiled. A serene, horrible smile. "The irony, eh, Doctor?"

Teeth clenched, jaw set, the Doctor's entire body shook as his eyes became harder and harder.

"Why?" he said, voice low and frightening to a degree far more unnerving than the shouting before. "Why did you do this?"

Xon's smile vanished.

"Because it would hurt you."

From everything she had seen so far, Suzanne thought that would be it. The Doctor would snap, and lash out, break down… do something out of the ordinary from what she had seen of him.

Instead, he just became a little more still, and far more controlled.

"Where's River Song?"

Xon cocked an eyebrow. "How do you know River S-? Ah, I see. 'It's a complicated relationship'. Now I understand."

"_WHERE IS SHE!?" _he screamed, desperation and anger merging together into something far more dangerous. She supposed this was the change she had been looking for; it just went in a different, deadlier direction than she had thought.

"You'll just have to find out, won't you?"

Another long pause, but this time Suzanne wasn't sure what to expect from anyone. Pierce could have grown another head and she wasn't sure it would surprise her.

The Doctor took a long breath through his nose before exploding into life in a way she hadn't seen since they were inside the Drum.

"Yes, fair enough, I suppose. Just being lazy, no excuse for it. I'm always trying to find shortcuts, me, always cheated at computer games, up, down, left, right, a-start, level select! Brilliant! Go anywhere you want and any-when you want. Bit like the TARDIS, just with less turbulence. And levers. And mallets. Although I _do _love the mallets."

Hands in pockets, and Xon watching him like he was a madman, the Doctor turned and started walking for the elevator. Everyone, as though magnetised, followed, Suzanne included.

"But yeah," he said, shooting warning glances that seemed to say 'get ready' at Suzanne and Pierce, "shortcuts, cheat codes, as long as I get to the right level, as long as I find the answer, don't really mind. Like, for example, that lift there, and this screwdriver here."

He pulled out the device, pointing it down at the ground. Suzanne did as she was told, and got ready. Her dizzy shakiness had slowly been replaced by a restless energy, human instinct kicking in. _Human_ instinct. She assumed that was a good sign. The sonic screwdriver whirred before anyone could do anything, and the lift platform disappeared down the shaft behind the Doctor.

"Level select, RUN!"

The Doctor turned on his heel as Suzanne ran past him, and she gladly took his outstretched hand. Pierce, however, was a little slower on the uptake, and a Raston Warrior Robot was suddenly next to him, latching onto his arm with a vice-grip, crushing it. He cried out, and Suzanne looked to the Doctor, who handed her the sonic screwdriver.

"Jump, and don't let go," he said simply.

She wasn't sure if he meant his hand or the sonic screwdriver. She didn't get a chance to ask, because the Doctor was leaping down into the shaft as the hatch closed.

His hand in hers, she didn't have much of a choice in the matter, and pushed off with her legs.

Hand firmly gripped in his, Suzanne watched as the Doctor stared intently at the shaft that was quickly flashing by them. A few seconds in, the Doctor suddenly shot out an arm, latching onto a wad of cabling beneath a small square grate.

He cried out as they suddenly stopped and his arm was tugged by the weight. The momentum sent them swinging down, and both the Doctor and Suzanne crashed into the wall. Thankfully it was mostly made up of cables and wiring, although the speed still made it very painful.

"Suzanne, press the button, please," he said, hissing through clenched teeth.

A little frozen with shock, Suzanne blinked a few times before a quick 'Oh' escaped her lips and she did as she was told, using the sonic screwdriver.

Like clockwork, a hatch above the Doctor's head slid open. Suzanne grabbed onto some of the cables in front of her, liberating the Doctor from her weight. She watched as he clambered inside the hatch, his dark red trainers disappearing inside. She heard some awkward shuffling and grunts before his head appeared.

"Well, come on then," he urged, waving her up with an extended hand.

Her arms not used to carrying more than a rolled up blanket, Suzanne struggled to lift herself up the cables and to the Doctor's waiting hand. Finally, though, she made it, managing to swipe a desperate palm onto his.

Something beeped below, and Suzanne heard the lift rumbling up towards her.

"Come on, come on!" the Doctor shouted, now pulling her with earnest.

Panicking, she struggled to get a foothold, but finally managed to clamber her way up and into the shaft, landing on top of the Doctor. The lift shot up past them, sending a rush of air into the duct.

The Doctor looked up at her. "You all right?"

Attempting with some difficulty to get her breath back, Suzanne just nodded. Apparently satisfied, the Doctor awkwardly climbed out from underneath her, waddling along down the tunnel with surprising swiftness.

"Pass me the sonic screwdriver, will you?" he whispered, throwing a hand back.

She did so, and he quickly brought it up in front of him.

He studied the whirring device in silence for a moment before making a satisfied grunt and looking back to her.

"Come on," he said lightly, like talking to a toddler he was taking for a walk.

Suzanne was happy to just follow the leader for the moment, not wanting to think about everything that had just happened. About what they had done to Katie and Simon, and what they were doing to Pierce right now.

What they were planning to do to her.

The Doctor eventually led her out to a corridor much like every other corridor she had seen in this place; grated floors, cables running along the walls and red lighting not providing much of anything by way of visibility.

Following something on the sonic screwdriver, the Doctor led her on a merry chase around the maze of corridors, making random left and right turns before sometimes stopping, muttering 'Hold on' to himself and then whirling on his heel and heading in the opposite direction.

On a particularly long stretch of corridor, the Doctor glanced back at her.

"You're quiet."

She shrugged.

"You all right?"

Unsure of how to reply, Suzanne just smiled and nodded.

"Good," he said quickly, nodding. "Because there's nothing to make you feel _not _all right. You're still you. You're still Suzanne Coltrane. No-one can tell _you_ what you are. _You _decide that. You make your own choices, your own fate. That's what makes a human a human."

"And a Doctor a Doctor?" she asked meekly.

The confused and annoyed look he gave her quickly gave way to a charmed smile, and he nodded. "Yeah. That too."

They continued walking and turned left at another junction when the Doctor spoke again. "Thank you, Suzanne."

"What for?"

"Always helps to have someone around to make you feel better- ah, here we go!"

At the end of the corridor stood a rather large door, at least a foot taller than the Doctor. Running the sonic screwdriver over it, he finally reached a small glass globe beside it. It flashed blue in response, and the doors slid open.

Leading the charge, the Doctor strode confidently into the large, dome-like chamber. The walls were much the same as the rest of the complex, cables and wires dangling loose, the occasional flashing light showing signs of life. Instead of the loud, clanging, grated floor, however, Suzanne found herself walking on glistening black tiles, organised like pavement slabs.

The Doctor found one in the middle that seemed to have attracted his fancy, and crouched down beside it. As she made her way over to him, he swung his head about quickly, and, noticing several other doors around the dome, pointed the screwdriver at them. They all beeped accordingly as he pointed at them.

"Locked," he said cheekily, grinning.

"But what about that one?" she said, nodding to the door they had entered through.

"Can't lock that one," he replied, not really looking at her as he ran the whirring device around the outline of the black slab beneath him. Deciding he was finished (seemingly at random), the Doctor put the device between his teeth and lifted up the black slab with a quick grunt.

"Why not?" she asked, watching intently as he slid the tile away.

The Doctor spat out the sonic screwdriver and poked his head into the hole he had made before bringing his eyes back to her.

"Because we want them to come in that way. Right now, stand back, next to me," he warned, getting up himself and backing away from the hole.

Pointing the screwdriver at a tile beside the hole he had made, he waited for a few moments before something hummed encouragingly.

"Is that…" she listened again, and nodded. "Is that a force field?"

The Doctor nodded, teeth bared in a grin. "Right you are, Ms Coltrane. You see, we are stood on top of the Drum. And that hole there leads down _into _the Drum. And that slab there," he said, pointing to the one just next to the hole, "has the control circuits for the force field emitters beneath it. Which I have just adjusted to emit a force field on my signal at _just_ the correct angle."

"The correct angle for what?"

The door opposite them opened, revealing a single Raston Warrior Robot in the doorway. It took just a second to note their importance, which was all the Doctor needed to press the right button.

The robot disappeared as a force field flashed into existence between it and them. Something bounced against the force field before disappearing completely. A tremendous noise sounded below, like something frying violently on a pan.

After switching off the force field, the Doctor peeked over into the hole and grinned, looking to her like a naughty schoolboy. He nodded her over, and, reluctantly, she went. Down below, in the now active Drum, a grey blur shot about the place at speeds she couldn't really follow; it made her eyes hurt to try.

"What did you do?"

"I activated a force field that went all around the walls inside the Drum. Bounced the Raston Warrior Robot in there using its own momentum, and allons-y, one killer robot out of the way."

"But… can't it escape?"

He shook his head. "Its own momentum will keep it going, and Raston Warrior Robots are indestructible. It could bounce around forever as long as the force fields keep going."

"How long do the force fields last?"

"With the power of this place behind it? Oh…" the Doctor looked at her and smiled. "Couple hundred years?"

She shared the smile, starting to feel hope that maybe, just maybe, this slightly mad alien man would be able to get her out of this.

The Doctor bounced back into action. "Right! Just let me make sure the force fields are set up properly, and we'll be on our way!"

As he crouched down at the blank tile, Suzanne backed away and walked around, looking around the dome. An alien ship in outer space. She was on an alien ship in outer space! No dream, no trip, just… reality. And it was so much more insane than she could have ever thought.

"You know, the funny thing about force fields is that they're supposed to be better and more efficient than walls and bars and concrete and metal, but really, they short out so much quicker and are easier to trick… imagine bouncing a toilet against a proper prison cell door! It'd just bounce off and fall on your foot or something, wouldn't it? Bet you never saw that in Porridge. Did you watch Porridge? I did, although I didn't really see the point, I mean honestly…"

As the Doctor continued talking, Suzanne smiled. She wondered if he was always by himself, always desperately talking away and jumping and running with everyone he met.

Something hot and painful hit her in the back, and the smile vanished. She looked down and saw the tip of something sharp protruding out of her chest.

The Doctor, still talking, stood up and turned around.

"… because really, why would you…"

He dropped the sonic screwdriver and raced towards her.

"NO!"

With another burst of pain, the sharpness retracted, and she collapsed to the floor. The Doctor was beside her in an instant. She saw the faint shadow of Xon stood above, backing away a little.

"Suzanne? Suzanne, look at me. Suzanne!"

She coughed, and she instinctively brought her hand up. Red splattered against her palm, and she looked at it in wonder, her gaze travelling up to the Doctor's desperate, tearful face.

"See? Human. So human."

He smiled. Such a sad, sad, beautiful smile. She smiled back.

"Thank you," she said, or at least, she tried to. The pain was overwhelming her now, and she was feeling so tired.

Her eyes closed.

And Suzanne Coltrane died.

* * *

(A/N: Hey everyone, thanks for the reviews. Hopefully you'll stay onboard for the rest, the story is closing in on the conclusion now, and I'm curious to hear your thoughts.)


	9. Self Destruct

Disclaimer: I don't own _Doctor Who._

_**Dominoes**_

_**Chapter Eight: Self-Destruct**_

Delicately and carefully, the Doctor lay Suzanne down on the ground. The horrific buzzing from below caused by the Raston Warrior Robot bouncing in the Drum filled the chamber.

He bowed his head, uttering one final, quiet apology before rising to his feet, looking to Xon.

"Why?"

Xon cleaned the ornate dagger with the tip of his coat. "You know why."

"But she was innocent! She wasn't a willing part of any of this, what do you gain from killing her?!"

Smiling, Xon gestured to him with the knife. "I get this."

Breath hitching in his throat, the Doctor swallowed before speaking, trying to control his voice. "Please. Please tell me there's something more to this. That this isn't all about me, that all these people…"

His smile deepened. "Wait until you see what happens next."

He lunged for the Doctor with the dagger. The Time Lord side-stepped and backed up, eyes on Xon rather than the weapon in his hand. Probably not the wisest course of action, but the Doctor was past caring.

"Why, what happens next? What have you done?"

Xon stood in an attack posture, waving the knife around in front of him. He still didn't make a move, and the Doctor's desperation reached new heights.

"What have you done?!"

"I've told the Raston… that it can start the process without the woman."

The Doctor, eyes wide, stared at Xon. He wasn't lying.

"You can't," he murmured.

"I already have."

"But you can't!" Wary that Xon might try to lunge at him again, the Doctor put out a pleading hand. "Xon, please, listen to me, whatever you have against me, whatever it is I am going to do, I am sorry, I really am, but you can't do this because of me! To start the process, the Raston will have to deactivate the temporal null field, and when that happens and _this _converter doesn't work, _everything on the planet will die."_

"And it will be your fault, Doctor. All those lives, because of you."

Xon started circling, speaking slowly as he passed the knife from one hand to the other. The Doctor followed suit, mindful to keep a few feet between them.

"You know, at first I was disappointed that you weren't _my _Doctor; that I'd caught you _before _you destroyed my life. But then… I really started to enjoy the possibilities. Because now, if I kill you - which was the plan all along, believe me - then nothing that happened to me _would _ever happen. It would all just… disappear. Even if, through some time-space hiccup, I still existed like this, I could take some solace knowing that somewhere, some-when, there was a version of me out there living happily with my family, having never known _you_."

There wasn't time for this. The Doctor could feel every second ticking away in his head. Every moment he wasted here, the Raston Warrior Robot was closer to killing everything on the planet below.

"Xon-"

"Even _if _you survive," he announced loudly, cutting him off, "you will have to live with the knowledge of what you are going to do. What, technically, you already _have _done. And you will be waiting for that regeneration, for this new face that I hate so much, that River Song _adores_… and you will see every single person as a threat. As me."

He smiled, and the Doctor almost didn't catch on until Xon was slashing towards his midsection. The Doctor managed to curve his body around the attack, the blade cutting through the blue material of his jacket. He stumbled a little as Xon came in for another downward strike at his head. Arms up defensively, he managed to block the attack at Xon's wrist. But his legs were at too awkward an angle, and they threatened to buckle beneath him as Xon applied the pressure, pressing the blade closer to the Doctor's frantic eyes.

"You won't be able to trust anyone, Doctor! Everyone you meet! I've changed my face, don't you see? I might be a boy, I might be a woman, you don't know! Every _single person _you meet from now on is going to be a potential threat to you!"

He leaned in closer, his breath hot and foul in the Doctor's face. "I might even be one of your precious humans. How do you know I won't be one of your travelling companions? Everything you love about them… their ingenuity, their imagination, their determination… all of it twisted in hatred and violence and death… all because… of you."

Something snapped in the Doctor. He felt it, some part of his mind that he rarely reached for, that nothing ever really touched. It just opened like a breaking dam. With a cry and a strength he didn't know he had outside of fresh regeneration energy, the Doctor shifted his grip and tossed Xon over his shoulder and down into the hole.

Xon latched a quick hand onto the edge of the hole, staring down at the lightning blue abyss beneath them. He looked up at the Doctor, his frame darkened by the bright light behind him. The Doctor knew Xon could be hit by the Raston at any moment. And at the speeds it was moving, the impact would tear Xon apart.

And yet the Doctor didn't move. He didn't shout 'hold on' and scramble over, offering Xon his hand, giving him a chance.

He just… didn't move.

"Well, Doctor?"

The Doctor said nothing, and slowly looked back to Suzanne's dead, bleeding form. He returned his gaze to Xon, his coat flapping in the breeze from a ventilation duct.

"Ah, there he is!" Xon shouted triumphantly. "_There's _the Doctor I know! Cold, merciless, swift! Deadly! You see, Doctor? You're already becoming the man you're supposed to be."

Seconds passed. They felt like years. The Raston Warrior Robot above was preparing to wipe out its own race. Xon was about to fall to his death. And somewhere, River Song was trapped, possibly suffering in great pain. All be because of him.

He was the Doctor, and frankly, he would be buggered if any of this was going to happen because he was too afraid of stepping on the wrong butterfly.

"Sorry mate," he said gruffly, striding over to Xon and grasping his hand firmly. "I'm not that Doctor. Never will be."

Xon made no move to help the Doctor lift him. Instead, he just stared into the Time Lord's eyes, his face incomprehensible.

"We'll see, won't we?"

His other hand came up from where it was dangling beside him, and he slashed at the Doctor's hand with the dagger. Crying out, the Doctor lost his grip, and Xon fell.

"No!"

Looking over, the Doctor saw Xon tumble, arms outstretched…

And then he was blinded by something reacting against the force-field, something overloading or exploding or… he wasn't sure. He put up a hand, but quickly brought it down when the reaction subsided. The slab with the force-field controls beneath it fizzled, sparked and popped, smoke belching out. Peering over into the hole, dreading what he might find, all he saw was the Raston Warrior Robot stood on the ground level of the Drum, directly in the centre. It looked a little puzzled, gathering itself after spending so much time ricocheting about like a pinball.

The Doctor slid the tile beside him back into place and snatched up the sonic screwdriver, which he had dropped before when…

He shook the thought away and sealed hatch. It wouldn't hold the robot for long, but he hoped it would be enough time to get to the other Raston and stop it.

Somehow.

With one last, mournful glance at Suzanne, the Doctor started running.

* * *

It took him less time than he thought to trace his way back to the control room; the life signs being given off by Simon and Katie were rather unique. The fact that he wasn't picking up a third anomalous reading gave him the smallest bit of encouragement; it meant Pierce hadn't been converted yet. Which also meant the Raston was nowhere near activating the process.

The lift platform still couldn't move fast enough for him.

Sure enough, directly behind the Doctor, the Warrior Robot was busy securing Pierce to the wall, who, blissfully, seemed unconscious for the moment. The Doctor couldn't see any connections between Pierce and the machine, just some metallic bonds holding him to the wall.

The Raston's head whipped around as soon the platform stopped, and the Doctor threw his arms up in front of him, shouting incomprehensibly before using words.

"Wait-wait-wait-please-wait! Wait, wait, wait!"

It paused for just a moment before turning its entire body around.

"The converter won't work!"

_That _made it stop. At least, the Doctor assumed it did, because the robot just stood there for a moment before tilting its head to the side curiously.

"All right, okay, good. Good, not… not going to attack me, good. Right, so, listen. Hm? Be logical, hear me out, nothing to lose from listening." He took a breath. "Xon lied to you. Without Suzanne, this converter won't work, so if you turn off the temporal null field around the planet, everyone dies."

He wasn't sure if it understood. It just glanced to the room behind the Doctor, the one with the viewport overlooking the planet. And, the Doctor couldn't help noticing, a control panel that most likely started the whole process.

"Look, I realise it's hard for you to understand, but you've got to learn that these…" he gestured to three people around him, "are real people. They have thoughts, feelings, hopes, regrets… they've sentient, they're _alive_. You can't let this happen. You…"

He took a breath, hesitant to deliver the punch line. The reaction could be nothing or… something a bit more painful than nothing.

"…you have to let them go."

Again, nothing. Instead of being relieved, however, the Doctor was just getting frustrated.

"Okay, look, just… they started out like you, logical machines sent to perform a task. But as soon as they took on human form, as soon as they started seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, _feeling_… they became so much more. I wish you could understand, I really do, because humans, they're… honestly, they're brilliant. So, so brilliant. Full of wonder and hope and optimism, you… you can't do this to them."

He was about to add a threatening 'I won't let you', when something occurred to him.

"Wait-wait-wait… you're a Raston Warrior Robot. You're a Raston Warrior Robot, of course! Blimey, I'm thick sometimes!"

He gestured wildly from the robot to Simon behind him, the excitement getting the words stuck in his throat.

"Look, just, look, you can…" he groaned loudly at his own verbal inadequacy. "Just download it! You can do that, can't you? I heard or read or saw somewhere that Raston Warrior Robots download experiences from each other when they return to base so that others can see how different enemies fight, is that right? Well, do that. See how Simon Teal lived his life. Or Katie Dell, or General Austin Pierce of the United Sta… oh, actually, how about we stick with just Simon and Katie, yeah?"

After a few moments consideration, the Warrior Robot tilted its head back upright, and disappeared. Looking behind him, the Doctor saw the robot slide its hand smoothly into a waiting, perfectly moulded slot.

And then he waited, slowly backing up to Pierce as he watched. There was no guarantee that this would work, and even if it did, the Raston still might not let them leave. But with all those emotions and sensations confusing it, the Doctor guessed (hoped) they might be able to distract it enough for them to escape.

Before the Doctor was even halfway to the good General, however, the Raston snapped back its hand as though burnt, stumbling a little. The Doctor frowned at the rather human movement. Robots didn't tend to stumble.

It threw back its head and looked at him. Or rather, looked at Pierce. Then to Katie, and then, finally, to Simon. Slowly, it started moving backwards. It looked like it was… horrified.

Then it disappeared. Looking around frantically, the Doctor eventually found it in the control room. He started running, though he knew it was probably futile.

"Stop, you can't-"

Pierce made a noise from behind him, a startled, loud grunt. "Wh- Doctor? What… oh God, what have they done?! What the hell have they done to me?!"

The robot walked out of the control room slowly, calmly. Which was odd. For a start, it was actually _walking_, not doing that slightly freaky floating effect. On top of that, it was looking around the room as if it had never seen it before.

The Doctor continued backing up, keeping his eyes on the robot before finally turning around and running to Pierce, who was shouting and screaming as many blue terms and phrases he could manage.

"Pierce, it's all right. Pierce, Pierce! Listen. You're fine. You're fine. They haven't started the process with you yet. And…" he threw back a cautious look at the Raston, "I don't think they're going to."

Pierce snorted as the Doctor worked on the bonds on his wrists.

"And how do you know tha-"

He stopped suddenly, his head whipping up to look at the Raston.

"Did you hear that?" he asked, eyes on the robot.

Frowning, the Doctor looked from Pierce to the robot and back again. "Hear… what?"

"It spoke."

"You sure?"

"Yes I'm- listen, it's doing it again!"

One of the bonds came loose, and the other did the same automatically. Pierce dropped to the ground beside the Doctor, who was just staring at the Raston.

"Nope… still can't hear anything."

"You must be able to, it's-" Again, he stopped, looking at the robot a little fearfully.

"What's it saying?"

"That I don't have to be afraid."

"Right," he said slowly, nodding. "That's good, that's good." He turned fully to face the robot. "Okay, so you've let Pierce go. How about Simon and Katie?"

Nothing. The Doctor looked to Pierce, who at first seemed to be listening intently before becoming immensely uncomfortable. The General's eyes brushed against the floor before looking to the Doctor.

"The… _process…_ can't be reversed for them. They're too far gone."

The Doctor tried to find the will to argue, to shout and rave about never giving up and doing everything they could. But it wasn't there. He had known, really, as soon as he saw them, that there was no going back.

"Are they still alive?"

After a pause, a slightly paler Pierce nodded.

Nodding slowly, the Doctor looked to Simon and then Katie sadly, sending a silent apology to both.

"Shut it down. Let them go."

For a moment, the robot did nothing. But then, finally, it nodded, and turned towards Simon. Sliding its' hand into the same slot as before, it looked up to Simon and then over to Katie. The lights that had illuminated their eviscerated bodies dimmed before finally blacking out altogether.

The Doctor closed his eyes and let out a long breath before looking gratefully to the Raston. "Thank you."

Alarms burst to life, and the Doctor looked around frantically. "What's going on?"

"It doesn't know," Pierce said quickly, almost defensively.

The Doctor ran for the door behind the Raston, but it was through before him. He skid to a halt at the doorway in time to tumble out of the way of Xon, hurtling through the air at speed. Ignoring him for the moment, the Doctor rushed into the room, looking at the planet below.

Glasses on, he checked the readouts.

What he saw sent a cold chill through him. He backed up to the wall, hands running through his hair desperately.

"No, no, no…"

Pierce was in the room, looking frantically around the room for some clue. "What is it? What's happened?"

"He deactivated the null field." The Doctor looked to Xon through the doorway. "He just wiped out every living thing on that planet."

Xon, badly burnt and shaking, struggled to stand, his legs giving out on him at every opportunity. Finally, he managed to stand with his head held high.

He smiled. "All of this, Doctor. Your fault."

And then the Raston Warrior Robot was upon him, latching onto his throat and lifting him into the air effortlessly. It tossed him across the room, sending him skidding and rolling along. The Raston appeared in front of him again and lifted him up, this time by the leg. It tossed him in a wide arch through the air, and he collided with the wall Pierce had been strung up against, his cries merging with clang of the metal.

Wincing, Pierce walked along with the Doctor as they exited the control room. "What's it doing?"

The Doctor slowly removed his glasses and slipped them away. "It's human. It just watched its entire species die, and the man who did it is right in front of it, smiling. What would you do?"

Xon was still smiling as the Raston latched onto his neck again and slammed him into the wall. With its' free hand, the Raston stabbed it into the awaiting slot in the wall, the same as the one it had used next to Simon.

"What's it going to do?"

He didn't answer, at least not directly. "I gave him a chance." The scar on his hand stung, and he looked down to it. "I tried to help him. He didn't take it."

The Warrior Robot began to glow, and Xon screamed. Horrifically, desperately, pitifully _screamed_.

Pierce nodded, as though this were run of the mill. "Good."

The Doctor looked at him. And in that moment, he saw everything about humanity that he hated, that sometimes made him ashamed to even be in their presence. The aspects that made him feel so justified in his 'stupid little apes' philosophy a lifetime ago.

And he saw those aspects in himself.

Donna's voice came crying out to him.

"_Doctor! You can stop now!"_

The memory jarred him back to life, and he properly saw, really _saw _what he was allowing to happen.

"Stop it," he said, bursting into a desperate run and skidding to a halt. The Raston didn't look at him, intent on Xon's pain.

"Stop it, do you understand? STOP IT NOW!"

Its head whipped around to stare at him. It let Xon scream on for a few moments more before suddenly and viciously letting him drop, backing away from the whole thing and allowing Xon to just collapse in a heap on the floor.

The Doctor was beside him in an instant, rolling him over so he was lying somewhat comfortably on the floor. He was breathing hard, bloodshot eyes scanning the room frantically as though he were confused as to where he was.

Pierce had walked over a little more calmly in the meantime, and stood beside the Raston Warrior Robot as he spoke.

"Why is he burnt?"

"He fell onto a force field," the Doctor said breathlessly, scanning him with the sonic screwdriver. "He used one of those teleporter beacons that brought us here to overload them. That's how he got into the control room without us noticing. But the energy backlash would have had the same effect as severe radiation burns. It's also why he was struggling to stand," he added, switching off the sonic screwdriver. "He was dying anyway."

"So the Raston robot did him a favour."

"No," he said sharply, "it didn't."

Xon took a rough, throaty breath beneath him, painfully sucking in air. Delirious, nearly blank eyes looked at him.

He smiled. A wonderful, happy, contented smile. "Oh," he offered weakly. "Hello, Doctor."

The Doctor slipped away the sonic screwdriver and sat down more comfortably beside him.

"Hello," he replied gently, smiling back.

His breath hitched a little as his lungs shut down. "Is it time to go home?"

Tears stung his eyes, and the Doctor blinked them away. "Yeah," he whispered. "Time to go home. You can see your family again."

Happily, Xon nodded. And then he was still, eyes staring up at the ceiling.

The Doctor closed them before slowly sitting back. Looking up at Pierce and the robot, he saw something incredibly similar in them. Both completely unable to comprehend his mourning, his sadness. Xon was alive, and now he wasn't. That was enough.

Legs aching, he pushed himself to his feet and looked to the robot.

"Where's River Song?"

Pierce frowned, listened, and then spoke. "There's no-one else onboard. It's just us."

Nodding, the Doctor looked down at Xon's still form. A lie. He wondered how much was fact or fiction. A part of him hoped it was all false. But the rest of him _knew_. Sometimes the Doctor hated his instincts.

"Time to go home," he announced quietly, looking to Pierce.

The General listened again, and nodded. "It only has one more beacon left."

"You can come with me. I've got a ship, I'll take you home."

He just nodded.

Tired, the Doctor looked to the Raston again. "Suzanne Coltrane's body is on the roof of the Drum."

It tilted its' head.

"Sorry, the… prison you kept us in. Just… make sure she and Simon and Katie… just make sure the bodies are treated with respect. Please."

Pierce's frown preceded what the Doctor knew was coming. "Doctor… you have a ship. We should take the bodies with us."

"No."

The man looked mortified. Ironic, considering his nonchalance at Xon being tortured to death a few minutes ago. The logic of military minds. "Doctor-"

He cut in quickly, in no mood to drag this out any longer than required. "Look, adopted, surrogate, whatever… would you want your family's last memory of you to be that?"

"Better than not knowing."

"Trust me. It isn't. Not for something like this."

After a long moment's hesitation, Pierce nodded the Raston's agreement.

That bit of business taken care of, the Doctor took another breath. "The other Raston Warrior Robot is down there as well. Teach it what you've learnt. That way… at least something good would have come out of this. It'll be a way for the Rastons to live on. Never forget where you come from. It's important."

Pierce shifted uncomfortably.

After a pause, the Raston disappeared. Within a second, it was back, holding the beacon in its' hand. The Doctor quietly took it, nodding by way of thanks.

"Pierce, you need to be touching it for it to work."

The General nodded and stepped forward before hesitating and looking to the Raston. "What happens to me? Am I still… human… inside?"

"It doesn't matter, Pierce, you're still-"

"It matters, Doctor. Physically, it matters. What if I'm in an accident, or have a medical? I need to know I won't be locked up and put on an examination table by UNIT."

Thinking about Yvonne Hartman and Torchwood, the Doctor just nodded. Pierce apparently got his answer fairly sharp-ish, because he was nodding thanks to them within a few seconds. He moved to the Doctor and put his hand on the beacon that lay in the Doctor's outstretched palm.

"What did it say?"

"Uh… without being hooked up to the machine and without the… paste they were feeding me, I'll revert back to normal over time."

The Doctor nodded, then shifted his gaze to Xon, who seemed more at peace now than he ever had when he was alive.

A sigh escaped him. Normal. What a waste.

After a few flashes of the red light, the beacon activated, and they were encompassed in white energy.


	10. Looking Ahead

Disclaimer: I don't own _Doctor Who._

_**Dominoes**_

_**Chapter Nine: Looking Ahead**_

Usually, a blue box that was bigger on the inside and could travel in time and space would have surprised Pierce. Instead, upon stepping through the doors, he had just paused for a moment, mentally notedthat the TARDIS was bigger on the inside, and then continued on, finally settling into one of the seats beside the console.

He did it rather quietly, and remained as much when the Doctor started twisting, pressing and slapping different parts of the console.

The journey back to 2009 was uneventful, and the Doctor actually had to cajole Pierce out of his seat (and daze) in order to get him out of the TARDIS.

He had never been so happy to see his own garden. Pierce actually took a moment to appreciate the _grass. _Afterwards, he walked in through the patio doors of the kitchen, which he remembered he had left unlocked by accident when he had left for England.

God, that was only a few days ago. The 456 seemed so far removed from his life now. But, according to the Doctor, he had been returned to more or less the exact moment he left. Everyone would be after him for reports, meetings, conferences, everything shy of an interrogation. And the thing was he couldn't really bring himself to care about it.

Ten percent of the children of Earth taken, and all he could think about was himself. What did that say about him?

As they entered, there were just shy of the long counter in the middle of the room. Behind it was another counter built into the wall where the cooker and a seemingly endless parade of cupboards resided.

Pierce solemnly sat down on one of the stools beside the counter and rested his head on his hands, sighing in relief.

"I can't believe it's all over…"

The Doctor nodded. "Big day."

He didn't bother to look around as he replied. "Is that all you can say? 'Big day'?"

The Doctor didn't say anything, although Pierce could hear him moving about the kitchen, surveying it like a potential buyer. Part of him was glad. He had no desire to argue with anyone right now, much less the only other person who could comprehend what he was going through.

"What are you going to do now?" the Doctor asked, his voice quiet.

Pierce brought his head up and stared at the cupboards opposite. He shrugged, the movement reintroducing the soreness in his shoulders. Being strung up off the ground by your wrists tended to do that.

"Don't know." His eyes drifted downwards, staring at his hands. His alien hands. "What _do _you dowhen you find out everything you believed about yourself was wrong?"

"Just… keep on going. One day at a time."

Pierce looked at him. "Is that what you're going to do?"

"Nah," the Doctor muttered dismissively, looking out the patio doors, "I don't measure things in days."

Pierce gave him a withering look. He was tired of all this evasive crap.

Looking tired of it himself, the Doctor sighed. "But yeah, that's what I'm going to do."

"What about those Jud… aliens things?"

"Judoon?"

He nodded. "What about them? Won't they be looking for you?"

"Nope," he said lightly, wandering to the door and leaning against it, eyes still on the garden. "Seems like they were just there to make sure it was me who picked up the beacon. Xon must have been worried about someone else getting to it, maybe a Time Agent, or…"

He shook his head tiredly.

"Anyway, no, they won't be coming after me. Not for _that_, anyway. I'm sure there are other crimes and violations they'll be after me for."

"Maybe ones you haven't even done yet," Pierce added, regretting it afterwards. While he couldn't admit to understanding _exactly _what had gone on between Xon and the Doctor, he could only imagine what it would be like to meet a perfect stranger who hated you with all his heart and soul.

The Doctor nodded. "Yeah," he said almost inaudibly. Then he took a long, sudden breath before briskly talking again.

"Well, I'll be off then." The words almost caught in his throat, but he finally managed to squeeze out, "Thanks for all your help, Pierce."

Grunting disgustedly, Pierce turned away from the Doctor. "Don't."

"No, but really-"

"Just don't. I don't want any gratitude for anything that's happened today. I mean… Jesus Christ, before all of this, I had just dealt with something that would have destroyed most men, and I came through it. I thought I could live with myself, that it was all for the greater good of the human race… and now I find out _I'm_ not even human?"

"You _are_ human."

A quiet, bitter laugh escaped him. "Says the alien."

The Doctor was stood next to him now, hand resting on the counter. As he spoke he leant in, like he was trying to push through some invisible walls between them.

"Exactly, and don't you think that gives me some objectivity on the subject? I can see the pros and cons and compare them against almost every other species across space and time. And you know what? I haven't met a species yet that equals you. Some of them have the ambition. Some of them have the kindness. But none of them have it all in the exact proportions that humans do. All of you, imperfectly perfect."

Pierce was unconvinced. "But _I'm _not human, Doctor."

"Look, Pierce…" the Doctor said, slipping into the stool next to him, leaning back against the counter and looking out the window opposite.

"…in the end, it doesn't matter what I say. It all comes down to choice. If you choose to be a Raston, then that's what you'll be. If you choose to be a human, then _that's_ what you'll be. It doesn't matter what anyone says or does or where you come from. You are what _you_ choose to be."

His brain had taken in too much today. What the Doctor was saying seemed to make sense, but right now… all he could think, all he could hear was _alien, alien, alien_, chattering away at the back of his head. Taunting him. But he knew the Doctor was right. It _was _his choice. And as God was his witness, he would be the best damn human being he could be.

The Doctor, seeming uncertain of what to do with the silence, slowly extricated himself from the chair and gave Pierce a light slap on the back before heading for the door. He had slid it open before Pierce finally managed to speak.

"Doctor."

He stopped, and Pierce turned to him.

"You have a choice, too."

Thinking about it a moment, the Doctor allowed a wry, sad smile, and just nodded.

There wasn't anything more to be discussed, so Pierce just said, "Goodbye, Doctor."

"Oh, bless you for not saluting," he sighed, which managed to make Pierce smile. He gave the smallest of waves. "Goodbye, General. And… just know that what happened, here on Earth, with the children… it _had _to happen. I know it's hard to see, but it'll give birth to so much good. Trust me."

Pierce stared as the Doctor backed out of the kitchen and slid the door shut behind him. Whirling on the spot so his coat flapped around him, the Doctor paused for only a moment before striding off to his ship, hands in pockets as thought nothing had happened.

He wanted to chase after him, to demand an explanation. But he had seen enough alien fireworks for one day. And he _did _trust the Doctor, as laughable as the concept seemed to him now.

Pierce didn't stick around to watch the Doctor leave; right now he was going to indulge in his human side. Whisky and cigars were pretty human pastimes, weren't they?

* * *

Without another glance back, the Doctor strode purposefully to the TARDIS, fumbling around in his pocket for the key. Pierce was right. Because the Doctor _chose _to help Xon out of that pit. He thought about letting him fall in favour of saving an entire planet, but went to save him instead. Even after everything Xon had done, everybody Xon had murdered and destroyed.

The Doctor had made a choice. And he would make a choice in the future. Maybe it will be as cut and dry as Xon said, perhaps not. But the Doctor knew who he was. And he knew that he would never make those decisions lightly or coldly. Not so long as he was the Doctor.

He reached the door, suddenly eager to get the TARDIS started up and off onto some new mystery or adventure. Something with lots of running and indignant, morally bankrupt people trying to take advantage of the little people, while also hopefully meeting someone of a like mind who would enjoy the running and the mystery solving as much as he did.

The Doctor stopped fumbling for the keys.

"…_and you would see every single person as a threat. As me."_

What if he met Xon?

No more companions, that was his vow. But the Doctor knew he wouldn't _completely _close off to everyone he met. Part of the reason he travelled was to meet people, to experience these amazing things _through _them. Without others, his travels really were worthless. And he wouldn't let anything stop that.

If he was honest with himself, it wasn't really Xon that haunted him. It was the man he knew. This man who called himself the Doctor.

The Doctor _had_ hesitated. He had hesitated to help Xon the first time, and had even let the Raston Warrior Robot beat him nearly to death before finally stepping in. His reasonable, merciful, _good _side had stepped in on both accounts… but what if that voice got quieter and quieter?

What if he regenerated and he couldn't hear it at all anymore?

And the thing was, he knew he was going to die. The warning from Ood Sigma, from Carmen… his song was ending soon. Four knocks, and then that would be it.

He had never before known ahead of time he was going to die. Or at least, not this far in advance. He had never been given the opportunity to think about it too deeply. He imagined this was what humans felt when they were diagnosed with a terminal illness.

The Doctor liked the man he was at the moment. And the truth was, through all of his regenerations, he had never been okay with dying. Fresh from a regeneration, this new man, just happy to be alive… _he_ always thought it was worth it. But that didn't mean the man before _wanted _to die. It certainly didn't make it any less of a death.

Each time he regenerated, one man died so another could be born. Or one was born so another could die, regeneration philosophy wasn't really his thing.

But the fact remained that something more always survived through all the regenerations. Not just memories. Something unique to him, something that made him the man he was. Just as it was for all Time Lords.

But what if that didn't happen next time, or the time after that? What if something went wrong with the process… changed him, made this new man different from all that had come before him?

It was the Valeyard all over again. The Doctor had spent months after meeting him second guessing himself, wondering if _this _or _that _course of action would push him closer to becoming… something worse. Eventually, he had forced himself past it, deciding that the Valeyard was a possibility, nothing more, nothing less. He made it easy on himself, reasoning that since the Valeyard was an amalgamation of his _dark _side, there was no danger.

But Xon _existed_. He wasn't a possibly, maybe, probably. What happened to him actually, properly _happened_.

The Doctor stopped himself. Maybe all this worrying about the future was for nothing. For all the Doctor knew, the four knocks overrode everything else, and this face would be his last. Time can be rewritten, that was what he told River Song. And maybe he would never live to terrorise Xon.

And it was possible that Xon was lying to the bitter end. Even if he _did_ know the Doctor and River Song in the future, he _could_ have been lying.

But looking into his eyes… there was something so haunted there, so wounded.

All because of him, because of this vague illusion… this unobtainable, new and improved version of him that was coming.

It was something that, truth be told, had been distracting him ever since he heard River Song's words.

"_Now, my Doctor… I've seen whole armies turn and run away… and he'd just swagger off back to his TARDIS and open the doors with a snap of his fingers."_

Whole armies running away in fear…

No second chances, he was that sort of a man. At the moment.

What if he became the sort of man who offered no chances? If you were wrong, you were wrong, and you deserved punishment. Because sometimes, he knew he felt that way, and it always frightened him because unlike most other entities in the universe, those thoughts weren't just angry fantasies or frustrated ramblings. He could make them real.

He could wrap them in unbreakable chains forged in the heart of a dwarf star, trick them into the event horizon of a collapsing galaxy, trap them in every mirror, or suspend them in time and put them to work standing over the fields of England… he could make them live and suffer forever.

The Doctor had done it before. Usually, he had someone there to hold him back, to remind him of just how monstrous those actions were. But so many of them had been ruined by his touch, his influence… travelling by himself seemed the only way. The best way. He had decided that he would just have to be that voice of reason for himself.

But Xon had met him while he was travelling with River Song, and the Doctor _he_ was familiar with… he didn't seem to have that voice. Even River Song, who the Doctor could _never _imagine being quiet in such matters… her voice didn't seem to make a difference to this new Doctor.

During the Time War, the Doctor had been forced to watch as two civilisations burned, all of it by his hand. Why would he ever do that again? Why would he want that pain? The only explanation was one the Doctor didn't want to think about.

The future Doctor didn't care anymore. Corrupted. Just like the Time Lords.

His hands slowly left his pockets, and he backed up a few paces. He held out his hand, top two fingers pressed against his thumb.

The Doctor snapped his fingers.

The TARDIS doors opened.

When he had done this for the first time, he had smiled, filled with wonder and excitement for the future.

This time, the Doctor didn't smile. He just walked into the TARDIS, where there was no Donna. No-one to tell him he was going too far. Just the Doctor travelling across the universe, deciding what was right and what was wrong.

He snapped his fingers again, and the doors closed. Slowly, he wandered around the console. And for the first time in a long time, he honestly had no idea where to go.

Either die as a man, or regenerate into a monster.

Suddenly, those four knocks seemed so much louder.

* * *

(Edit 22/03/2010: I've altered this chapter to better reflect the Tenth Doctor's mood and development over the final few specials. Usually I hate doing this sort of thing, but considering I'm going to be writing a sequel/prequel to this story which is going to go into the Doctor's thoughts looking _back_ on the Ten/Eleven regeneration, I felt it was important to be accurate. There was also a tiny niggling thought in the back of my mind about the Doctor's view of the events of _Torchwood: Children of Earth_, and I decided to make it one of those 'fixed points' he talks about in detail in 'The Waters of Mars'.

I also want the two stories, once finished, to work well together, so it wouldn't really gel if Eleven was reminiscing about how terrified Ten was about dying when I had previously written him in this chapter as being mostly okay with it. When I originally wrote it, I didn't (couldn't) anticipate the far more interesting route that Russell T Davies took with the concept.)


	11. Epilogue

**Disclaimer: I don't own **_**Doctor Who.**_

_**Dominoes**_

_**Epilogue**_

They had decided to use numerical designations. 1st, because it was the first to renew, and 2nd.

It was logical.

Both 1st and 2nd wished to scan the planet, to search for any forms of life. They must survive; they must be remembered. It was important.

Something was found.

2nd wanted the process over with quickly. It wanted more. It felt loneliness. Fear.

1st wanted to wait, to test. It was concerned about the pain they could bring. It felt trepidation. Caution. Fear.

As they worked, 2nd would look at 1st.

2nd didn't like being 2nd.

2nd wanted to be 1st.

It was not logical.

But it would feel good.

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(A/N: Although this is technically _the_ epilogue, the previous chapter was also an epilogue for the Doctor and Pierce, so I decided to post the three final chapters together. Hopefully it all flows well enough. Although maybe epilogue/prologue would have been more appropriate, since I've got a sequel (with Eleven, Amy and River Song) in mind. But that won't be for some time - at least until the 2010 has gotten underway so I can see what Matt Smith does with him.

Anyway, thanks for all the reviews, everyone. While I've got a few more _Doctor Who _stories in mind, this is likely to be the last major Ten story. I mean, never say never, but I haven't got any pressing ideas for any Ten fics at the moment. So as last hurrah's go, I'm pretty happy with this one. Hopefully you all enjoyed it as well, let me know!)


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